The Help

In a striking kickoff to the two actresses’ back-and-forth awards-season competition, Davis paid a warm tribute to the woman she described as an idol, a mentor and a friend. She spoke openly about the loneliness of being an ambitious African-American actress with very few role models to follow, who had seen talented forerunners like Cicely Tyson and Dorothy Dandridge essentially kicked to the curb by Hollywood. She hadn’t been looking for a Caucasian role model, she said, but the craft and range of Streep’s work on stage and screen had always impressed her, and when they worked together on the 2008 film “Doubt” (for which both were Oscar-nominated) they became good friends. Streep’s example had demonstrated a fearlessness and generosity, Davis told us, that had opened new pathways in her personal and professional life.

Streep then took the stage to deliver a dry comic monologue in which she claimed — incorrectly, I believe — that only a minority of the critics in the room had voted for her. (I’m a member of the group, and I don’t understand its voting procedures, but Critics Circle chair John Anderson has said that Streep won a first-ballot majority.) But before she moved on to that, Streep thanked Davis for her introduction: “How remarkable, and how generous, for you to do that. This is your year.”

That was a heck of a lot of high-class dames in less than five minutes, and we were all appropriately dazzled. But looking back on that event, and Davis’ remarkable speech, I think that Meryl Streep saw what was coming more clearly than the rest of us did. (Furthermore, I think she’s 100 percent fine with it.) At that moment, she looked like the prohibitive favorite to win the best actress Oscar, both because she had given a dominating performance as a major historical figure in a big holiday-season movie, and also because she has been nominated an unbelievable 13 times since her last win (for “Sophie’s Choice,” in 1983) and at age 62 is probably close to the end of her leading-lady career. She went on from the New York critics’ award to win several other prominent critics’ groups, along with the BAFTA Award and the Golden Globe. A shoo-in, right?

Not exactly. Of course I could be proven wrong, but along with virtually everybody else who pays attention to this circus, I’m betting that Viola Davis ends up clutching one of those little gold statues on Sunday night — as much because everybody watching wants to hear her acceptance speech as because of anything she did on-screen in “The Help.” People talk about all the backstage hoodoo that goes into an Oscar campaign, and Harvey Weinstein’s admittedly amazing powers to bend the minds of Academy voters to his will. But I’m not sure we’ve ever seen an actor go out and claim an Oscar during the campaign in quite the forthright and dramatic way that Davis has.

Davis evidently decided that this was her opportunity, after a long career of stage roles and oddball supporting parts and runs on “United States of Tara” and “Law & Order: SVU,” to come out with guns blazing and let the world know who she was and what she thought. It may have been a calculated decision on some level, but she’s a ferocious, intelligent and independent-minded woman as well as an outstanding actor, and there’s nothing strategic about that. She has spoken directly about all the racial and social discomfort caused by “The Help,” and about the yearning for positive role models that sometimes limits the choices of African-American artists.

Most notably, when PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley told Davis and costar Octavia Spencer (who is also likely to win, for best supporting actress) that he felt ambivalent about the prospect of them winning Academy Awards for playing servants, six decades after Hattie McDaniel, Davis delivered a dressing-down that violated the happy-friendly norms of chat TV. “That very mind-set that you have and that a lot of African-Americans have is absolutely destroying the black artist,” she told Smiley. “The black artist cannot live in a place — in a revisionist place. A black artist can only tell the truth about humanity, and humanity is messy, people are messy.” Smiley was clearly startled — but he was standing on the track in front of the Viola Davis Oscar Express. One can only pity the fool.

Davis has talked openly, but without a hint of self-pity, about the difficulties of being a black actress in an industry that still relies heavily on caricature and stereotype, and even about being a dark-skinned black actress at a time when, as she recently put it, “Halle Berry is having a hard time.” After she brought this up, during a Newsweek panel discussion featuring various Oscar candidates, Charlize Theron jumped in to assure Davis she was “hot as shit,” which was a nice thing to say and all but (as many commentators have observed) massively misses the point. Win or lose at this year’s Oscars, Davis won’t get offered Theron’s wide-ranging dramatic roles, from serial killer to narcissistic sexpot, and won’t get the Vogue covers or Dior endorsement deals either. If it’s any consolation — and it probably is — Theron’s “Young Adult” was a dud, and she was not nominated this year.

As far-fetched as this seems now, when Davis delivered that Manhattan introduction for Streep, she was a long way from being a for-sure nominee herself. She had appeared in a pulpy, controversial hit that had opened well before Oscar season and was aimed 100 percent at female audiences (two doses of poison for the guy-centric Academy), a movie that made a lot of money and ignited a sharply polarized debate on the history of race in America. That’s at least three strikes, maybe four — and then there was the question of whether Aibileen Clark, Davis’ character in “The Help,” even qualified as a leading role. Emma Stone’s crusading white journalist, Skeeter Phelan, is clearly the protagonist, and Aibileen is pretty much the stoical, even-tempered Robin to Skeeter’s hotheaded Batman. On the other hand, while Stone and Spencer and Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard and all the other women in the movie chew up the scenery (and often enjoyably so), Davis delivers a performance of tremendous dignity and quiet, almost stillness. Amid all the histrionics and violence and poop-eating, Aibileen is like a Zen monk contemplating the essential emptiness of everything. She knows a great deal more than she says, and Davis communicates that nonverbally, through her carriage, her measured movements, the long pauses before she speaks.

Everything the Academy ever does can, and probably should, be viewed through a cynical lens. Nominating Davis for best actress — along with the supporting nods for Chastain and Spencer — was a way of honoring “The Help” as one of the year’s cultural touchstones while navigating around the racial controversy sparked by the film’s release. The Oscar-season script, a few weeks ago, looked something like this: African-American viewers got a rooting interest in the best actress campaign (while still being permitted, like Tavis Smiley, to deplore “The Help” on various levels), Davis got a major notch in her career belt, and Streep would go on to collect a career-spanning Oscar after a tour de force performance and many years as a bridesmaid.

Instead, Viola Davis has seized the opportunity. Not just the opportunity to stage an unlikely upset and win an Oscar, although she’s probably done that. More important, she has seized the chance to remind us that she is an immensely underutilized and underappreciated actress and one of the most outspoken free thinkers in the closed-mouthed, cliché-spouting world of Hollywood stardom. Should she be playing bigger and better parts than Aibileen Clark? Of course. Was that really the best screen acting performance of the year? Almost certainly not. But the Oscar is always about much more than that, like it or not, and someone with Meryl Streep’s social conscience and sense of drama understands that well. We’ll likely never know what Streep may have told her friend in private, but what she said in public was enough: “This is your year.” She was right.

It makes you wonder where all those casting directors and filmmakers who so desperately want Chastain in their movies now were a few years ago, when she was a little-known television actress whose biggest part had been a four-episode role on “Law & Order: Trial by Jury.” There are no answers beyond the usual clichés: Showbiz is full of pretty faces, and sometimes all it takes is one little break. Chastain’s break was pretty big, and came when Terrence Malick cast her opposite Brad Pitt in “The Tree of Life,” where her shimmering, ethereal presence created a thematic and visual balance to Pitt’s intense, compulsive, authoritarian father-figure.

But “Tree of Life” was only the tip of the iceberg, and the 30-year-old Chastain has most definitely been making up for lost time. In terms of audience appeal, her biggest role has been as Celia Foote in “The Help,” the hapless, white-trash-made-good housewife who was both that film’s comic relief and, in an odd way, its most honest and unaffected white heroine. The scene when Celia insists on eating lunch in the kitchen with her African-American maid (Octavia Spencer) — who is none too sure she wants to be friends with this high-maintenance, neurotic white lady — was arguably more moving than “The Help’s” more histrionic race-relations drama.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Chastain seems to suddenly be in every upcoming film. Within the last year or two, she has played a Mossad agent (the younger version of Helen Mirren) in “The Debt,” a detective in the serial-killer drama “Texas Killing Fields” (out next month), Virgilia in Ralph Fiennes’ version of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” (to be released this winter) and Salome in Al Pacino’s meta-theatrical “Wilde Salome,” which premiered in Venice a few days before I met her at the Toronto International Film Festival. Her big-budget Hollywood breakthrough may lie just ahead, since she will reportedly star opposite Tom Cruise and Olivia Wilde in “Horizons,” an interplanetary science-fiction thriller from “TRON: Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski.

Then there’s “Take Shelter,” an intense psychological horror drama from indie director Jeff Nichols — looking for his own breakthrough after the 2008 underground sensation “Shotgun Stories” — which Chastain was promoting in Toronto. I’ll have more to say on this film very soon, but it’s an absolute knockout, one of the best American films of the year. Chastain and the remarkable Michael Shannon play Samantha and Curtis, a married couple in small-town Ohio clinging to the lower edges of the working class. It’s very much a film about this moment in America, a film about economic recession and madness and faith and family, even  climate change and disastrous weather. Samantha must decide whether to cling to Curtis or flee from him as he goes through a breakdown and suffers from disturbing, apocalyptic visions — which may just have some basis in reality.

So, Jessica, you’ve had this amazing run of movies. I understand you can pull up the list in your mind pretty easily.

Yes! Let’s see, there’s “Tree of Life,” “The Help,” “The Debt,” “Take Shelter,” “Texas Killing Fields,” “Coriolanus” and then “Wilde Salome,” which just played in Venice. So six films that have already come out or are coming out, and seven if you include that one.

And you just finished shooting at least one other movie. Or two, if we count Terry Malick’s next film as well.

Yes, I just finished working on “The Wettest County in the World.” I’d be surprised if that came out this year.

That’s John Hillcoat’s film, right? Another collaboration with Nick Cave. (They made the 2006 Aussie western “The Proposition.”)

Yes! And I’m so excited about this film. I keep telling everyone that the acting, across the board is — oh, my gosh — every performance was mind-blowing. It’s got Guy Pearce, Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska. The ensemble is sick.

Can you actually keep all these movies clear in your head? I mean you come to a festival to help out some movie you shot a long time ago, and people like me ask you to remember specific episodes or specific scenes.

I mean, sometimes it’s hard. I don’t have a problem remembering the films, because they’re all like children at a certain point. But when people say, “Can you tell me a funny story, something that happened on set?” And you’re like, oh God, from “Tree of Life”? That was three years ago. So trying to think of a funny thing that happened, that’s a bit tough. Other than that, I remember them all like my beloved children.

Right. What about if I’m, like, “What was going through your mind in this scene? Why does your character do that?”

Oh, I’ll remember that forever, yeah. With the characters that I play, I absolutely know them and the psychology of where they come from. What they deal with every day, what their fears are. I don’t think I’ll ever lose that.

Well, you’ve been picking winners. It’s such a terrific list. In “Take Shelter” and “Tree of Life” and “The Help,” you play these really different women who are touchingly, doggedly loyal to very difficult husbands. That’s not much of a connection, maybe, but I do feel a kinship between Mrs. O’Brien in “Tree of Life” and Samantha in “Take Shelter.” Do you see it that way?

You know, I see more difference between these characters, because Mrs. O’Brien in “Tree of Life” is the representation of grace, whereas I feel like Samantha in “Take Shelter” is closer to nature. She has a lot of nature in her. The most dangerous animal in the wild kingdom is the mother grizzly, or, like, the female tiger. They’re the ones who do all the killing. I think Samantha is more like that. Nobody messes with her family, nobody hurts her child. In fact, she reacts with violence, she hits her husband in the face. She’s very, very strong. She’s the head of the household, really. He makes the money, but she makes the rules. For me, they are completely different women, but I can understand what people see there: They’re both women who stick with their husbands, they’re both powerful and committed mothers.

A lot of people talk about Terry Malick’s methods, and about his unwillingness to discuss the film too much. I wonder if that was a big difference between these roles, working with him versus working with Jeff Nichols. Because these are two powerful and disturbing films that have an allegorical quality.

Actually, when we did “Tree of Life” we talked about it a lot. I had the script and I knew exactly what the film was when we were making it. I was very much a part of that conversation. I think people who say they’re not sure are usually people who come in for a couple of days. I just had that experience recently on Terry’s new film. I don’t know what the film’s about, I never read a script, and I came in for less than a week! It was strange going from “Tree of Life” to this thing where I had to say, “I have no idea what I’m doing, but fine!”

“Take Shelter” was really different. We had no time to shoot this film! So we couldn’t have a lot of discussion. We really had to be quick. I met Mike [Shannon] on Saturday night, I think it was. On Sunday, we hung out with Tova Stewart, who plays our daughter, for a little bit, and then on Monday we were filming the doctor scene that comes at the end of the film. We had never met before, and for a movie that Jeff says is about marriage and faith, that’s a scary thing. You go in there and you think, OK, I have to make this relationship as real as possible. We don’t have time to be polite, we just have to be honest.

Did you have to do that classic actor thing, where you identify ways the character is like you, and work from that?

Not really. I kind of felt Sam before, I understood her journey. I’d had the script for a while, but I was mostly concerned with the relationship between Mike and me, between Curtis and Samantha. I mean, the whole film hinges on this relationship. What does this man have at stake, what does he stand to lose? If that’s not there or that’s not strong, then the film doesn’t work. Jeff even told us that there’s a look between Samantha and Curtis at the end of the film, at the very end. And if that look doesn’t work, the whole film falls apart.

I agree with that, and that’s really a devastating moment between them. Talk about the way Samantha changes, and this relationship changes. Because I think this is one of the most interesting screen depictions of marriage I’ve seen in a long time.

What I really like about the dynamics of what we play is that in the very first scene, we don’t even look at each other. It doesn’t mean we’re not in love, but I find that really honest. These are people who’ve been together a long time, they’re going about their day and saying, “Oh, don’t forget to pick up this thing. We’ve got to be here at this time.” There’s no time for, like, “Hello, darling.” Which sometimes you see in films, let’s show that they love each other: “Hello, my love.”

We’re being as realistic as we can, and then at some point there’s this change where she starts to look at him, and realizes something’s wrong. It’s like, how long have I not seen this? How long has this been going on? She’s wondering, have I been taking this relationship for granted? All of a sudden he’s somewhere else, and I don’t know how he got there.

To me, the most important shift in Samantha’s character is after the ambulance comes to the house [after Curtis suffers an apparent seizure in the middle of the night]. Then there’s a scene where Curtis lays everything out on the table. Before that, I think Samantha was heartbroken and thought their relationship was over. There was no communication left, and the closeness they had was gone. After that scene, when he shows such great faith in her, in telling her this and trusting her to be there, she in turn shows great faith in him. Even when something happens later and she feels like he hurts her daughter and she hits him, she still shows faith in this man, like she knows he’s beyond his own actions and behavior.

Often marriage is portrayed in the movies with these very even, steady arcs. Either the people are pulling apart, pulling apart, until it’s over or they have one big crisis and then get back together. This marriage has a lot of wobble, a lot of give and take. It shifts back and forth.

Yeah, absolutely. After that moment where I hit him — and I hated doing that scene, because I hate violence and I love Mike! I don’t want to hit him in the face! — after that scene, when she decides to come back, she lays everything out on the table. It’s not like [overdramatic voice], “I love you, my darling!” I loved that, and it’s not the expected idea of, you know, we just had a fight and let’s make up, in Hollywood. It’s not until the fish-fry scene, when they’re in public and she has demanded that he be there, that she truly understands the place where he has gone. [Curtis suffers a major public breakdown in that scene.] And from then on, she needs to act with the utmost compassion that she can muster.

That scene is something, as people will soon discover. Michael Shannon is a very powerful actor all the time, but that’s like watching a volcano erupt. We’ve been waiting for it and waiting for it, we know it’s going to happen, and then — oh, man.

It was amazing. He’s such a brilliant actor. After the very first take of that scene, all the people applauded. All the extras, and I was like, “No, you’re supposed to be scared of him! Don’t clap!” He’s one of those actors — it’s undeniable, his talent. He has so much intensity and power physically, because he’s a big guy, but also he’s got this great face and these amazing eyes. There’s such strength in him, and that masks this really intense vulnerability, this epic vulnerability. He’s got both, and that’s really exciting — to be in a scene with somebody who can muster such great strength and such vulnerability.

Let me ask this the right way: The end of “Take Shelter” is very ambiguous, and I’d like to hear your opinion. Without giving too much away, is Samantha entering his reality, maybe his madness? Or is what we see happening at the end of the movie really happening in the outside world?

I don’t want to answer that question.

I didn’t really think you would.

No! [Laughter.] I guess it’s because — and I found this out with “Tree of Life” — when I answer questions, it’s not as interesting as an audience member solving it for themselves. I made a mistake at Cannes, after someone saw “Tree of Life” and totally loved it, and then they asked me something. I answered the question and, like, you could see them going, “What?” They were so disappointed with my answer! I was like, whoops, I learned my lesson right now.

Well, if they were asking you the question, it probably means they already thought they knew the answer.

Exactly! They have an opinion about what it is, and they want me to validate their opinion. They want me to agree with them so they can say, “Oh! I was right!” But if you say something else, they’re wondering, maybe I didn’t get the movie, maybe I didn’t understand it. It’s more interesting when we see ourselves in films, when they move us on a personal level. For me to impose what I think it is robs the viewer of that experience.

“Take Shelter” opens Sept. 30 in New York and Los Angeles, with wider national release to follow.