In honor of Black History and Oscars month, here's "The Help."

There’s inherent danger should a white homeowner permit their colored maid, or any of the help, to use the indoor facilities. It’s not only a breach of etiquette it promotes unsanitary conditions, colored people carry unfamiliar diseases, think of the children.

This was Mississippi 50 years ago, in reality the nicer side. Decidedly racist white Jacksonians pretending Southern hospitality is a virtue as they send the help to the outdoor facilities, even in the most unforgiving elements.

That bathroom issue, it was a recurring conflict in Tate Taylor’s 2011 “The Help,” the quick adaptation of a 2009 Kathryn Stockett novel. The film, which examines the friendship built between one young white woman and two working black maids just as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining traction, is up for a slew of Oscars this year, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Viola Davis and two Best Supporting Actresses for Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain.  

As evident in the bathroom dilemma, which is a spot trivial when in 1960s Mississippi civil rights activists were being executed on shadowy dirt roads by local police, the film takes a noticeably non-violent approach to the tumultuous crossroads. Not even a mention of the Ku Klux Klan, the use of the notorious N-word was all but scrubbed away.

Aspiring young writer Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (a nearly unrecognizable Emma Stone) returns home from the University of Mississippi with the radical notion she may forego a husband for a career in writing. This being a time when people could get jobs at newspapers, she soon lands a local column on housekeeping but defers to her family maid, Aibileen Clark (Davis, in her second Oscar-nominated performance) for guidance.

An unlikely, seemingly unheard of, relationship is forged. Stories of keeping house turn to stories of a black person keeping a white house and raising white kids for a family of ingrates, indignity is in the job description. Soon sass-mouthed Minny Jackson (Spencer, Supporting Actress nominee,) recently fired by villain Hilly Holbrook (a rather unintimidating Bryce Dallas Howard,) offers a host of terrible tales to accompany.

More stories from more maids surface, enough to publish a book, yet it’s curious just how taken aback Jackson-raised Skeeter is by these omnipresent injustices. We’re only left to assume that college opened her eyes in ways she couldn’t before thought possible, suddenly the world she grew up in was never one she knew.

Aibileen is a woman of constant sorrow, her friend Minny is the brash type, the kind that can steal the show and trick prissy Hilly into eating some of the most disgusting pie (think of the bathroom issue.) For Davis and Spencer, their performances are bold enough for respective Oscar nods. The other Best Supporting Actress nomination for Jessica Chastain playing Celia Foote, a bubblehead mistress and unwitting outcast in the white social order, is a happy but unmerited gesture.  

Otherwise performances were gripping, the core three characters anchored a movie fragmentally gentle with the atrocities of institutional racism. It’s also a shame Sissy Spacek’s little discussed performance as Mrs. Walters, the senile (maybe) mother of Hilly, went overlooked by the Academy.

With the help of Taylor her timing is impeccable, a woman falling into dementia is at times comically inappropriate, but it’s easy to laugh with Mrs. Walters when even she takes pleasure in seeing her nasty daughter get her just desserts.