Why Green Book Deserved Its 2019 Best Picture Win
“Hollywood is so mad at Hollywood after Hollywood gave Green Book best picture”
If you had asked me a week before the Oscars ceremony who was likely to walk away with the Best Picture award for 2018 film releases, I would’ve given you two answers: Black Panther or Blackkklansman. In the age of #OscarsSoWhite, where progressive politics rule over Hollywood like the Eye of Sauron, it seemed a safe bet to put money on the films that embrace that which the social justice left deems most valuable.
Thus came the surprise when, of all the films that talked about racial issues in 2018, the Best Picture Winner of 2019 turned out to be Green Book, a smaller film produced by a white director that the progressive left largely disregarded as retro.
They claim that it’s a movie that was supposed to make white people feel better about racism and push aside race issues as elements of the past. The favored, more intersectionally-minded movies instead embraced racial identity, pushing progressive themes about police brutality, gentrification, colonialism, and anti-capitalism to the forefront of discussion.
Really messed up that Spike Lee lost to Driving Miss Daisy a second time three decades later
— Lindsay Ellis (@thelindsayellis) February 25, 2019
Remember how BLACKKKLANSMAN ends with, "oh yeah nothing has changed and we haven't learned anything?" And people were like, "that's really on the nose."
Anyway, GREEN BOOK won.
— Me, Matt Guringo (@EmperorOTN1) February 25, 2019
Of course GREEN BOOK was co-written by a racist Trump fan.
Of course. pic.twitter.com/OY0yerNWFE
— Film Crit Hulk (@FilmCritHULK) January 10, 2019
"Green Book" Won Best Picture at Oscars 2019 Because it Made White People Feel Good About Themselves https://t.co/GaSVagmtHd pic.twitter.com/EnnglTA3T0
— Sebastián Cooper (@sebastcooper) February 26, 2019
It’s just worth considering that these same complaints wouldn’t be coming from these voices if a white-directed film like Vice or A Star is Born had won Best Picture. Green Book is getting under people’s skins because it’s a film about race made by a white director. It doesn’t matter that he consulted with multiple black filmmakers, worked closely with Mahershala Ali to develop his character or what his actual opinions on race are. Green Book is a being condemned across film twitter because its director has the wrong skin color and doesn’t double down on SJW-approved themes about race.
Green Book wasn’t the best movie of 2018, and personally, I don’t think it deserved to win best picture. My pick would’ve been for Orson Welles’ posthumous masterpiece The Other Side of the Wind, the recently released Never Look Away from the acclaimed director of The Lives of Others (the greatest anti-communist film of the past two decades), or Paul Schrader’s excellent late in life masterpiece First Reformed. Of the nominated films, I would say Roma was the strongest nominee and would’ve been my preferred pick. That said I’m enjoying the fact that Green Book won. Of all the recent films about race and racial issues to hit theaters in 2018 that I saw, Green Book was the one that I feel had the most positive message.
The social justice left has given up on the notion of colorblindness and trying to heal racial divides. It believes the only way forward is for white people to admit their complicity, defer to black progressive leaders, and step aside. The system they perpetuate is one of double standards that, in turn, perpetuates the notion that people aren’t deeper than their skin color.
Green Book isn’t perfect, but it’s a quietly sweet movie that embraces the notion that there is a colorblind future that can be fought for. It allows for the possibility that people can break cycles and improve.
#GreenBook was splendid. The mediocre #BlackkKlansman and "Green Book," explored "race relations," in '62 & '72, respectively. "Green" ends on a hopeful note about a lasting black-white friendship. "Klansman" ends with propaganda on how Trump is whipping up racism now.#Oscars
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) February 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/SethMacFarlane/status/1100406069073981440
Like one of last year’s best movies, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Green Book offers a path where the world can be allowed to improve. In a time of incredible tension and strife that’s a future worth fighting for. For that reason, I’m glad it won Best Picture.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
If Hollywood voted it Best Movie, I won’t be watching it. Their standards are different than my standards. I would have voted for Atlas Shrugged Part 3.
Good post, but I disagree about Roma. It was not that good. Roma had great cinematography
and framing of shots, but as a film was disappointing.
I liked Green Book a lot. Black Panther was a good film as Marvel films go. BlacKkKlansman was a good film that had a hokey political ending. I give it to Green Book for the interplay between the two protagonists of the film. A buddy flick that changed them both.
Black Panther was mediocre as marvel origins go. It was overhyped to the extreme.
It’s fascinating that Leftists voted for the sainted Obama on the basis of his skin pigmentation, largely out of self-congratulatory vanity, to validate their self-perceived notions of moral superiority.
Yet, a few years after St. Obama has left office, these same Leftists are happy to reject the cultural/societal significance of a bi-racial man having been elected to the nation’s highest political office — twice — in spite of his pathological narcissism and his rank incompetence, and, revert back to their negative perception of the U.S. as a place of perpetual, irredeemable racism.
last movie we bothered to go see in a theater here in The Valley was “Gran Torino”
with traffic, parking and the walk all the way through the mall, or the crowds at Universal, it’s a minimum of an hour to get there, then at least $30 for tickets, and another $20 for two small drinks and a small popcorn.
then you have to try to watch the movie in and around scream, running kids, crying babies and idiots on or playing with their phones, all to give our money to people who literately hate us & our beliefs.
F that noise. we can stay at home & watch the Western Channel, where they show good movies from back in the day, if we want entertainment.
Hollyweird can go pound sand up its collective 4th point of contact until they can defecate a glass paperweight.
Bravo!
Yo redc1c4,
You beat me…the last in theaters for me – Ground Hog Day, when it came out….watch a lot at home, but at my convenience and choice….
Let’s just bite the bullet for our own sanity, let’s give the sjw, blacks, and Hollywood, California, we may need to give them Oregon too, but’s it’s worth it.
The Nation is broken, there is no going back, there is no healing
I want them gone and I’m willing to give them the majority of the West coast to do it.
Let them fight amongst themselves and we will eat popcorn.
They can’t change their minds, once they make their decisions, that’s it, no do overs
I agree. Those states should be on the other side of the wall. With Mexico.
Once upon a time I believed in MLK’s vision of judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, but now I’ve been cured of that affliction.
As a result I don’t want to see- and have not seen- any of these Hollywood creations extolling one race over another; I know already who the bad guy is, they’ve made that perfectly clear: they don’t like me, they don’t like people like me, nor do they like the culture that my kind built which they now defile.
The feeling is mutual. As a result I only watch films that don’t feature race. I haven’t seen any of the films under discussion, nor do I plan to; they weren’t made for me to enjoy, but to teach me a lesson. I’m not buying that garbage, and those of Spike Lee’s ilk can kiss my butt!
To quote Hans Landa … “Ooh, that’s a bingo!”
Hollywood and Silicon Valley are like Sodom and Gomorrah, and I wish they would meet the same fate.
Romo was an immigration sjw movie
So tired of the BS
Let’s give them California and Oregon and all the sjw, blacks, ilegals, and trannys can move there, that is the ones who are not there already.
So done with them
If we don’t do something like that, and soon, we will have another civil war
I am willing to give up 2/3 of the West coast for peace of mind.
And there will be no do overs, once they pick a side, that’s it.
Funny, my comment did not originally post so I later posted a similar post and WHAMO, it shows up…
Gremlins
Gremlins
Another movie…
All I know is that Spielberg is whining about Netflix’s recognition by the Academy. 🙂 And Spike Lee is still a racist twerp 😉
Who cares?
I agree with sdharms, who really gives $0.02 about which movie won an Oscar etc.
Maybe Green Book is a great movie and maybe not. I don’t really care.
Hollywood can just go pound sand. Red Carpet, who is dressed to kill, who is dressed to look stupid, how many tears, is Bradley Cooper really in love with this Gaga broad, I’m sure their arms must be sore and tired from patting themselves on the back so much recently.
Who Cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!