How I Was "Help"ed

I am a movie lover.  I watch big budget commercial films and I watch indie films. I love to laugh. I love to cry. I even enjoy getting a good scare. But I mostly love movies that do more than entertain. Movies that stay with me long after the lights have come up and I have driven home. Last night I saw one of those films.Last night, I saw "The Help". If you haven't seen this film, please do. I can't speak more highly of it.I am from the South and I have always had a complex relationship with my Southern-ness. I come from a long line of Southerners. Kind people. Good people. Loving people. And strong people. They are what my heart calls home. They are what makes me feel Southern. They represent what I love about the South.But obviously, that is not all there is to being Southern. The South has a very checkered past that plagues my heart and soul. And truthfully, a present that sometimes in some places continues to plague me. I have spent much of my life distancing myself from that "South".And like many Southerners, I have wanted to forget just how bad things were. And this movie slammed me into the heart of Jim Crow and the obscenity that was pre-Civil Rights South. No white-washed version of an Antebellum past.  It reminds its audience that the horrors of institutionalized racism are not simply a part of some distant past but  part of a technicolor time. This film provides an un-varnished glimpse behind the curtain that South has wanted to hide behind.The performances are terrific. It is rare that I see a film wherein I wouldn't recast a thing. But that is true of this film. Down the line, this film is cast perfectly.I am still digesting this film. I laughed a lot. Cried more. The South did not invent racism and it certainly has not held within its borders all of racism's evils. But the tapestry of the South is woven with the blood and tears wrought by racism. I am glad that I saw this film even if it wrought tears from me.Please see this movie. I have never advocated a film on this blog before and while I might again, I doubt that I shall with the passion I feel about this film. I am different for having seen it. I am different for having experienced it. And I am better for it.Have you seen the film? What did you think?