Important Movies

I'm holding out switching on of my picks for Driving Miss Daisy as blackmail

I actually watched Driving Miss Daisy on Netflix this summer. It's not a bad movie but how it won Best Picture at the Oscars is a mystery. My only guess is that adults in 1989 were nostalgic about an old lady bossing around a Black guy. And that's really the big issue with the movie. The Morgan Freeman character isn't realistic. I understand that it was a different time and it was a decent way to earn a living, but there's no way he would have become friends with her - and vice versa. In real life that guy would have gone home and talked shit about that old lady. The movie was just too... good-natured. It was a Song of the South for the 1980's. Speaking of which... did we ever do 1946? Song of the South is definitely a movie that warrants a discussion.

We did, I don't think it came up.  Final five were It's a Wonderful Life, Notorious, The Big Sleep, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Beauty and the Beast.

I missed the first big conversation on that movie and was interested in understanding the hatred for it. I think I have clearer picture now.

I've never seen Song of the South (for a variety of reasons) but the impression I get of it is that it wasn't made with malice but that it's really offensive in its general tone deafness and that it willfully ignore the social context of the era its set in.  The description I've heard is that it was like if Disney had decided to make a film about Jews in 1947 Berlin and fill it with happy upbeat musical numbers with names like "Aren't we Happy" and "Nothing Bad Ever Happened Here."

Driving Miss Daisy is similar in that you could kind of see it being a good movie if it had been made in, like, 1957 and starred Sidney Poitier or something, but by 1989 we should have been making movies that dealt with race relations a little more honestly and bluntly... movies like Do the Right Thing.  The Academy's decision to award such a thing just kind of felt like a bunch of old dudes saying "shut up all you uppity negros with your hippity hop and your disrespect of police, the way to get white people to like you is to drive them around for a decade and do as you're told."

It kind of is...

There's a large Asian American population that would disagree with you.

I didn't mean that the characters in it are role models, but as far as depicting racial conflict on film it's plainly the standard bearer.

Well, one thing we can agree on is that Duke argues like a butt head and would never make the debate team (we can do without the insulting language).

Driving Miss Daisy IS a period piece set in the south. While I can see what you are saying about it, it is also not beyond the realm of possibilities that some people who spend all that time together would grow somewhat closer - regardless of the time period. It all depends upon how we treat each other as human beings.

As for Hoke being unrealistic? People are individuals. There is a man in my building who is kind to everyone, he helps everyone he can, and greets everyone with a smile. Even when someone called him the "N" word he barely says a bad thing about them. All he did was cut them out of his circle of friends - he and they still live in this building. Is it unrealistic that he didn't go to the manager of the building and lodge a complaint? Not in his mind. He's very good natured and even tempered.

I liked Driving Miss Daisy because Hoke was such a good person and very patient with her. He took the time to change her mind about him, and to show how much further we all can get with a little patience, kindness, and understanding.


I have not seen Song of the South either but I understand why it isn't shown anymore - someday I will find it and see for myself. I am familiar with the Uncle Remus stories that it comes from.

You can see Birth of a Nation online as it is in the public domain. Maybe it was impressive in a simpler time, but it is categorically a work of fiction and alternate  history drawn from the book The Klansmen. Absolutely absurd and laughable in its skewing far from reality.

It's hilarious to be so up in arms over Dracula's critique of Driving Miss Daisy, because that's exactly what that pandering movie is. And I don't dislike the film, I scored it a 7, but to think it's anything other than some nice performances from its leads especially in 1989 is hilarious. Hell, Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life from 1959 was more bold and genuine in exploring race than that movie. His point of it being a safe choice, ESPECIALLY when Do the Right Thing came out that year is so on point. It's like when Crash won over Brokeback Mountain in 2005, the Academy copped out with the pandering, safe choice instead of choosing the film that actually delves into its issues. Crash and Driving Miss Daisy both have one generic theme; everyone is racist until we realize, oh wow, that black guy is actually just like me and a good person and I shouldn't judge them based on their skin color but rather their actual character. Wow, what a groundbreaking concept! Except that Do the Right Thing says "yeah, no duh" to that and tackles race head on in pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Just the idea alone of "it's my establishment, and while I respect that my business is in an African American neighborhood that doesn't mean that I can't have my pizzeria decorated in Italian American decor" combatted by "we buy your food, we want some representation here" concept far exceeds anything Crash or Driving Miss Daisy even pretend to acknowledge. Like Dracula said, if Driving Miss Daisy came out in the 50s then it could get by on the "well it's the era it was made in" argument, but when it comes out the same year as Do the Right Thing, you really can't. It's a safe choice, and even if we're examining it on a cinematic level and not a thematic one, what does that film even do that deems it important? It's shot in standard play fashion with little to no remarkable shots and cinematography and plot-wise there's really not conflict other than the church bombing, which really doesn't have that large of an impact either. Freeman and Tandy are very good in their roles, and so is the supporting cast. But in the end, if it plays it safe everywhere else, why should it be deemed important?

Jessica Tandy, not Jessica Lange

By the way, I also almost put Glory on my list.
That is a good film - I thought Broderick did a good job but is still probably miscast - and all in all it isn't a historically accurate film in all respects, it is a good one about an important topic. If no one likes Driving Miss Daisy I throw my support to Glory instead.

(even though there is a black kid wearing a digital watch in one scene lol) It has a Great soundtrack, shows some of the struggle of the day that black people and abolitionists were up against.