Green Book review: this could be one of the most grounded Best Picture Oscars
art review
This may be the most grounded Best Picture of the Oscars
The 91st Academy Award for Best Picture, Green Book has been released in China, and it's probably the most grounded of all the Oscars in the last ten years, with no high barrier to entry and no need for serious interpretation.
It's not often that a comedy wins the Oscar for Best Picture, so it was a bit of a surprise to critics when the light-hearted and humorous Green Book won over the epic Rome. The light-heartedness of Green Book was its greatest strength. As we all know, the theme of racial affirmative action has been a favourite of the Oscars in recent years. Of the eight nominees this year alone, three of them addressed this theme directly. Black Panther was the first black superhero film, and as a result it created a wave of viewing and word-of-mouth in North America, but it was ultimately an entertaining film with a fantasy twist; Black Partisan also explored racial issues through a comedic approach, but director Spike Lee abruptly turned the camera on reality at the end, allowing the audience to confront the rise of racism with a heavy cry; and in Green Book, there was neither a high-tech fantasy of high-tech fantasies of a future Africa nor shocking social realities, it returns to a rustic, simple story of putting aside prejudice through the journey of two main characters, one black and one white, on a tour of the South. It is not harsh or preachy, but allows the audience to understand for themselves, even if they only gain some warmth from the laughter. This is the value of "Green Book".
Although the story of Green Book is simple, the script is solid and well-crafted, and the performances are excellent, giving us a perfect example of Hollywood's maturity. It begins by overturning the usual racial characterisation of the black musicians as refined and civilised and the white drivers as rude and uncultured, and this inversion breeds a number of new laughs. On the other hand, a road movie must be a journey in which character growth and sublimity are accomplished, and Green Book lays out many details along the way to make the transformation of its protagonists natural and believable. For example, the white driver goes from sneaking out the cups used by the black repairman at first, to fighting for the pianist in deep trouble, to supporting the pianist's strike without pay. You could say that this is a white man letting go of his racism, or you could say that he is changing for his friends. And such friendship slowly allows the black pianist to open up and come out of his loneliness, and even start trying to eat fried chicken and play jazz, gradually finding his true self and stop living for the outside world's gaze.
Although Viggo Mortensen, who put on 40 pounds in Green Book, excels as a smooth-talking, boastful driver of Italian descent, Ali Mahershala's role is more difficult. He is elegant and arrogant on the outside but has a profoundly low self-esteem on the inside, and despite receiving numerous applause on stage, he is unable to gain any real respect or recognition from society. What struck me was the scene where the two quarrel in the rainy night, the only emotional outburst the pianist has: "If I'm neither white enough, nor black enough, nor even man enough, then tell me, who am I?" Through the darkness of the rain, I couldn't even see whether it was tears or rain on Ali's face, but I was deeply struck by his performance. It was this restraint that allowed Ali to take home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar once again.
What audiences won't forget are also some of the film's best lines. "There are so many lonely people in the world because none of them have the courage to take the first step"; "Talent is not enough, it takes a lot of courage to change people's perceptions"; "My father used to say that whatever you do, you Do it 100 per cent, work when you work, laugh when you laugh, and eat like it's your last"; "Violence never wins, it's keeping your dignity that leads to real victory" ...... Even putting aside the theme of racism, the These lines can still touch us across the ocean, which is probably the so-called universal value and the cultural connotation that Hollywood films can continue to export.
The fact that Green Book was released in the US was met with a number of questions, mainly about the authenticity of the story. Based on a real person, one of the screenwriters was the son of a white driver, but the film was met with accusations from the black pianist's family that the film's portrayal of Don Shirley was a figment of the white man's imagination and not realistic, and that the two men were even in a relationship of employment with no supposed friendship. Now that both characters have died, the truth is hard to find out, but perhaps it is this 'untruth' that makes the film have a happy ending that everyone will be happy to see. At the end of the day, Green Book is just a film, a story told by the writers through real people, and probably audiences will want a moment of tolerance and warmth in the cinema more than the blood and gore of Black Party.
