Oscar 2019: "Green Book" (2018)

​EveryBestPicture.com revisits this Oscar Best Picture winner

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(80% / 93%)
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2019 was not a vintage year for Hollywood, and the Oscars made sure we will not forget this fact any time soon.

The nominations for Best Picture this year were the winner, “Green Book”, an entertaining enough “BlacKkKlansman”, cringe-fest “Bohemian Rhapsody” which hung on the lead’s brilliant impression of Freddy Mercury, blockbuster “Black Panther”, the earnest “A Star is Born”, European costume drama “The Favourite” and “Roma” which could never win in this category as it was Mexican, a Netflix film and the best film of the year.

The top three of these were not Hollywood productions and therefore outsiders, of those left many were surprised to see Green Book walk away with the much coveted little gold statuette. But why?

This ‘based on a true story’ tale, like any good TV movie, is that of a chapter of Dr Don Shirley’s life. Having been invited to study in the elite Leningrad Conservatory in the Soviet Union, the first black person to do so, we find this piano virtuoso embarking on a tour of the ‘deep south’. His record label employ a minder (Frank Vellelonga, or Tony Lip as his largely Mafiosi friends and acquaintances call him) whose duty it is to drive him from one engagement to the next, and to ensure that he is not way-laid by southern racists with the help of the ‘Green Book’- a guide for black drivers in the segregated south.

Spending 2 hours with a copy of the actual 'Green Book' might be a better way to spend your time.

​Little about this film stands out as being unworthy of Oscar greatness- the premise has won before: an ‘interracial’ pair drove through the southern states in Driving Miss Daisy, 1989, making similar racial harmony pit stops along the injustice highlighted freeway. There is even a similar ‘driver stops to take a pee, much to the passenger’s horror’ scene. This may well become a trope.

My consternation in this pick lies in the sheer lack of quality. This is a middle of the road excursion. It never slips into the intellectual fast lane, nor does it stop to admire the scenery. It just pootles along introducing a number of lazily constructed stereotypes as characters (Italian immigrants built around the “Forgeddaboudit” persona of the mafia heyday, with no other angle explored). The Italian community featured could well have been on day release from a comedy sketch (Key & Peele have one that comes to mind). There are no events of note, nothing unexpected happens (not even the discovery that Dr Shirley has sexual experiences with men really raises an eyebrow, telegraphed as it was by the occasional pursing of the lips by Mahershala Ali in the role of the good doctor).

The film is even shot in such a disappointingly perfunctory way that I couldn't describe it as shoot by numbers. Tony writes home to his wife “I never knew how very beautiful this country was”, and his droning voiceover is accompanied by a shot of a pretty average looking pasture. No depth, no scope, no beauty. This could not have been hard to do, surely? The viewer wonders what inspired Tony to write those words and why the filmmakers neglected to use the medium of film to share such a visual feast.

The very best scenery in all of America. Tony does NOT look impressed.

​Most disappointing of all was the simplistic way the film dealt with the central issue of prejudice is about as safe and by-the-book as it can possibly be. While travelling through Kentucky, our Italian American driver spots a Kentucky fried chicken: “IN KENTUCKY! When’s that ever gonna happen?!”. Dr Don Shirley, when faced with the culinary experience in question asserts, nonplussed, “I have never had fried chicken in my life.” The first effect is the obvious: The audience watches Tony’s surprise and is encouraged to shake heads and chuckle at his absurd generalisation that “You people love the fried chicken, the grits and the collared greens…”
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“Oh Tony” (the viewer declares), “if only you could see yourself through my 21st century eyes.” The racist assumption of “what THEY eat” is ridiculed. Fair enough, but it is not exactly breaking the surface. Just ten viewing minutes later the two of them are presented with a meal by the white southern gentlefolk who “whipped up a special menu in honour of our guest… home cooked fried chicken!”. We are once again invited to roll our eyes.

I have to say, this is the most disappointing of all the Oscar winners I have yet seen. A winner should highlight some kind of achievement in a film, of ANY description, and quite honestly I am baffled as to what about this film might have stood out to anyone.

Meh.