The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Oscar win by ‘Green Book’ frustrates some
NEW YORK — The decision to hand the best film Oscar to “Green Book” continued to be debated Monday, long after the last Champagne glass had finally been emptied.
Spike Lee’s vocal disapproval of the segregation-era road-trip drama was but an early indication that “Green Book” will remain a polarizing choice, especially for its depiction of race relations and sentimentalized approach. It beat
Lee’s own confrontational “BlacKkKlansman” and the Afro-futuristic “Black Panther.”
“Many of us in the black community would like to see greater recognition for movies about the black experience and not just for movies that make the black experience comfortable for white audiences,” wrote television commentator and author Keith Boykin.
Justin Chang a critic at the Los Angeles Times, laced into “Green Book,” calling the film “an embarrassment” and “the film industry’s unquestioning embrace of it is another.” He declared it “insultingly glib and hucksterish, a self-satisfied crock masquerading as an olive branch.”
“Green Book” tells the story of a white man who becomes friends with black concert pianist Don Shirley, whom he drives through the 1960s South for a concert tour.
Seated in the audience on Oscar night, Lee waved his hands in disgust and appeared to try to walk out of the Dolby Theatre when “Green Book” was announced as the winner of the top trophy Sunday.
Mahershala Ali, who won a best supporting actor trophy on Sunday for his role in “Green Book,” said in November he believed the film’s uplifting approach has value.
“A couple of times I’ve seen ‘white savior’ comments and I don’t think that’s true. Or the ‘reverse “Driving Miss Daisy’ ” thing, I don’t agree with,” he said then. “If you were to call this film a ‘reverse “Driving Miss Daisy,’” then you would have to reverse the history of slavery and colonialism. It would have to be all black presidents and all white slaves.”