Maybe you'll consider this cheating as I saw The Favourite a while back when Chris was still here, but, Oscar Edition motherfuckaz. Eat it.
As I've mentioned, I've been a fan of Olivia Colman for years. I think the first time I saw her was in Peep Show and/or Mitchell and Webb. The fact that she kept appearing in EvERYTHING BBC and has now won for Best Actress is just fantastic. Emma Stone is as husky-voiced as ever and her deviousness was palpable. And then there's Yorgos. His movies always fuck me up and I think this is his tamest. I usually tire of the type of movies where one must be polite above all else, one may be as snarky as one prefers, but one must always be polite, until someone eventually snaps and, I don't know, poisons someone... This was my issue with Downton Abbey. If more people solved their problems with violence, things would just go faster. Not better mind you, but faster. If Rachel Weisz* just threw Emma Stone down some stairs at the first sign of backstabbery, things might have turned out better, but the film would only be eight minutes.
Oh subtlety...scoot!
A few years back, both 12 Years A Slave and Django Unchained were nominated for Best Picture. People referred to them as the "serious racism movie" and the "funny racism movie" respectively. In the former, we saw Chiwetel Ejiofor undergo unspeakable, nightmare things, and, after over a decade in this hell, somehow barely manage to escape. Racism wasn't a person or group of people, it was a huge machine which destroyed the hearts, minds, and bodies of men, women, and children. In the latter, we didn't solve racism, but we saw Foxx go on a bloody rampage against those that purportrated racism against him, so for him, maybe he DID solve racism. I feel like BlacKKKlansman and Green Book are kind of in the same place, although I wouldn't really can BK wholly "funny" just like I wouldn't really call GB wholly "serious". BK is dark as fuck with some really dark and sometimes goofy humor tossed in. Why not call it what it is? It's a Spike Lee joint. His stuff is always very...Spike Lee-y. As for GB, I would call it this year's "cute" racism movie. Yes, Mahershala Ali (who I dug in Treme and everything else I've since see him in) wasn't allowed to eat here or try a suit on there and some white men pushed him around and punched him !!!! But that punch happened off camera. Because this was a PG-13 exploration of racism in the Deep South in the early 60's, so there was only so far they could go. In the end, the racism felt problematic, a thing to be navigated, rather than the huge, disgusting stain on history it really is, and as it was shown, beautifully, tragically, in BK.
Also, I feel like we missed something between Viggo's character THROWING OUT GLASSES BLACK MEN HAD TOUCHED to taking the doctor's money and agreeing to be his driver for two months. They didn't seem THAT hard up for cash. And, yeah, I got the feeling he didn't want to work for the MAFIA, but there wasn't enough of a struggle for me to believe this racistdude would just go along with it. And, the fact that these two magic months taught Viggo Mortensen tolerance and love and respect...I don't know, it just felt like a Disney version of racism.** The performances were great, the music was excellent, truly something special, but the whole thing felt very sanitized, which is exactly how racism should NOT be portrayed, especially today, in this racial climate with this Nazi sympathizer as the president. It should be exposed and left seething as the filthy shit it is, not something to be tiptoed around.
Final thought on Green Book: Viggo Mortensen is starting to look like Ed O'Neill in his later years.
* I just love that sneaky little 'z' at the end of her name...
** And not like Song of the South. That's...a different form of Disney's version of racism.
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