They put up a good fight, but in the end, not even the howls of a thousand raging social justice warriors could keep “Green Book” from winning the Oscar for Best Picture on Sunday night.
Though “Green Book” deals with themes related to race relations and racism, wide swaths of the intersectional Left worked tirelessly to trash its chances of winning Best Picture from the very start, from Viggo Mortensen’s academic use of the N-word to screenwriter Nick Vallelonga’s alleged “Islamophobia.” Unlike Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” Peter Farrelly’s “Green Book” commits the grievous offense of actually offering a resolution to American race relations, audaciously suggesting that only through mutual understanding can harmony overtake discord.
Writing at USA Today, Brian Truitt said that “Green Book” stole the show from better deserving artists simply because they had black skin or because they pushed an anti-Trump political message:
It’s also the wrong choice on a night where Lee stood exultant with the first non-honorary Oscar of his long career and Hannah Beachler of “Black Panther” became the first African-American woman to win for production design. “Green Book” ending the ceremony triumphant was odd, a dunderheaded decision at worst and a dull one at best. (Also, if your movie is about race relations, maybe don’t have your trophy-room pictures be only of white filmmakers?)
Truitt and many other critics have decried “Green Book” as the worst Best Picture winner since “Crash” or “Driving Miss Daisy.” They all neglect the fact that 2017’s Best Picture winner featured a deaf woman becoming romantically involved with a magical fish; 2016’s winner depicted one teenage boy giving another teenage boy a handjob on a Florida beach. If anything, “Green Book” is a return to classical storytelling.
Writing at CNN, Lisa Respers laments “Green Book” reinforces how America wishes to see itself in 2019:
The movie of the same name has a scene with a white man teaching a black man how to eat fried chicken, while the white character drives him through the ’60s South.
And it won the Oscar for best picture on Sunday night.
If that ain’t America, nothing is.
Just like the nation remains split over issues of ethnicity and identity, the film has caused a divide between those who see it as celebrating friendship and those who see it as racist.
“Green Book” chronicles the real-life friendship between piano virtuoso Dr. Donald Shirley, played by best supporting actor Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, and Tony Vallelonga, played by Viggo Mortensen, who served as his driver.
The film has faced criticism by some for seeming to reinforce the “white savior” trope used by Hollywood time and again in films having to do with race.
Justin Chang at the LA Times went completely off the rails, denouncing the “Green Book” upset as an “embarrassment.”
Peter Farrelly’s interracial buddy dramedy is insultingly glib and hucksterish, a self-satisfied crock masquerading as an olive branch. It reduces the long, barbaric and ongoing history of American racism to a problem, a formula, a dramatic equation that can be balanced and solved. “Green Book” is an embarrassment; the film industry’s unquestioning embrace of it is another.
Could the Academy really have awarded Best Picture to a movie that SJWs loathe? Maybe 2019 really will be the year Hollywood decided to make itself great again.