One White Woman's (ill-advised?) Journey toward and Rave Review for Green Book

(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) Five Enthusiastic Snouts up for the movie Green Book which controversially just won best picture.  It was a bit of a journey getting to Green Book, but I finally did, and, spoiler alert, I loved it.  When I first heard about the movie, I immediately wanted to see it.  But I had read reviews and heard from critics that it might be sentimentalizing segregation.  That it was just another black white buddy film written and directed by white men.  That it was the new Driving Miss Daisy (only reversed).    

These criticisms really caught our attention, and we strongly considered skipping the film altogether.  Then our young adult children came home for Christmas holidays and we took a look at the movie offerings on a given day.  Only two films that the four of us could agree upon were being shown in the right window:  Green Book and Creed II.  Unfortunately our kids talked us into Creed II--I didn't have the pleasure of seeing the original Creed (full confession: in the late 70s I had a poster of Sly Stallone on my bedroom wall), I'm told it was a steep fall from I to II.  

That choice behind us, I put Green Book in the back of my mind and kind of assumed I wouldn't get to see it.  Then a friend of mine left a long voicemail message with a "spiritual check-in" that was 90% about how good Green Book was, or at least I thought that was what she was talking about, the message was slightly garbled.  The next time I spoke with her directly, I brought it up.  "Were you talking about the movie Green Book on that message?"  She said "yes! have you seen it yet?"  I said no, and mentioned the critical reviews.  She said she hadn't read those reviews and that she and her relative (both of whom are African-American) had absolutely loved it.  So there's that...

Then about a month later, ANOTHER friend, in another ostensibly spiritual talk, speaks for 15 minutes about how Green Book was kind of a life movie for her (a 'life movie' is a movie that is so perfect for you that it's one of your top movies of your life).   I spoke with her about this afterwards, and told her about the negative reviews.  She, an African American woman who also happens to be a top concert musician, expressed disagreement and said "consider the source, that movie was God's honest truth."  So there's that...

And then we saw it.  Just last weekend it was the only thing we could find to do on a Sunday afternoon of a holiday weekend within walking distance of our hotel in San Francisco.  Oh. My. God.  We just absolutely loved this film.

Now, I haven't seen every movie that was nominated for best picture this year and so I'm not positive that I would have voted for it for best picture.  But I can tell you that this particular white woman found it to be a stunningly beautifully written and acted movie about the relationship between these two men in the context of segregation.

The deep cynicism of some of these negative reviews honestly makes me wonder if any of these folks actually watched the movie or did they just read the plot?  Yes.  There is SO much about the conceit of the film that could have gone badly awry in the execution:  black white buddy road movie genre is SO over done.  The elite African-American pianist could have been portrayed as a caricature.  The movie could have made the northern whites seem non racist or the southern whites seem to be racists with a heart of gold.  None of that happened (in my estimation).

The dialogue, the character development, the relationship works.  It just does.  Tony Lip, the Italian driver, is a bit of a caricature of Italian Americans in some ways, and definitely provides the comic relief.  But the film was created and written by his actual son, and this is a true story.  And Viggo Mortensen, who plays Tony, displays a stunning range of emotions, skills and depth.  I haven't seen Bohemian Rhapsody and I've heard that Rami Malek's performance is amazing, but I'd have no trouble handing Viggo an oscar for that performance.

And Mahershala Ali was equally magnificent as Dr. Don Shirley.  What beauty, what poise, layered over such humanity.  I'm thrilled that he won best supporting actor.

Now lets talk about Spike Lee and Blackkklannsman for a second.  I am a HUGE Spike Lee fan.  I was outraged when Do The Right Thing--which I consider to be one of the greatest films of all time--was passed over.  But Blackkklannsman is not even in my top 10 favorite Spike Lee films.  So no, I don't think I have to be outraged that it was overlooked for best picture.

I don't fully understand how or why the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences makes its decisions.  And I can't know that Green Book "deserved" the oscar.  But I can know that IMHO it was one helluva film.

And the winner is...Chaos! Will Vice (Cheney) or Trump win the award for most destruction to our democracy?

With the movie Vice up for several Academy Awards and a trumped up "state of emergency," it is time to compare the Trump and Cheney/Bush presidencies.  What comes to mind is chaos vs. control.   No, not KAOS vs. CONTROL as in the brilliant sixties spy send-up Get Smart.  We’re talking Chaos and Control: the universal forces.   While both Trump and Cheney may be power mad rightwing leaders creating change, Trump is chaos.  Vice President Dick Cheney, whom the movie Vice portrays as (and many believe to have been) the true leader of the Bush presidency, is control.   I have an emerging hope that, despite appearances chaos may be more beneficial to the democracy than control. 

For one thing chaos = disruption, which we now value.   We live in a time where Amazon, Uber and other highly successful companies celebrate their “disruption” of business as usual.   Trump is the disruptive presidency.  Could he be the chaos we need to disrupt the system of complacency, ignorance and lack of engagement?  Surely the flaunting of separation of powers by declaring a fake state of emergency on the heels of a government shutdown is a major piece of that. You didn’t know the importance of separation of powers?  Watch the president take your tax dollars away from something you value and use it to build a wall;  didn't know you needed the feds?  Try getting food stamps, visiting a national park, getting your tax return, seeing a doctor, flying on a plane, during a government shutdown.  

Let’s look at it more closely.  Dick Cheney, the movie Vice reminds and educates us, systematically, methodically and quietly seized power in the Bush White House from the famously powerless position of the Vice Presidency.    Cheney recruited and cultivated the theory of  “unitary executive power:” a way to vastly expand the power of the executive beyond that of the other previously “co-equal” branches of government, legislative and judiciary.  When Al-Qaeda attacked on 9/11, Cheney created, from that crisis, opportunity (as the overworked Chinese maxim recommends).   Convincing Secretary of State Colin Powell to dissemble before the world about “weapons of mass destruction,” the Bush-Cheney team was able to justify the invasion of Iraq (instead of Afghanistan, which would have been the obvious choice), allowing their big oil buddies to get their greedy hands on long-desired petroleum fields. 

Moreover, it seems that Cheney accomplished all this all fairly secretly, largely out of the public eye.  The consequences of Cheney’s campaign for control were devastating.  While US military casualties were low as wars go, it is estimated that Desert Storm killed close to 500,000 people in Iraq, including a high proportion of women and children.  Nearly 100,000 Afghani people were killed.   In the name of defeating “terror,” the Patriot Act was created to justify secret extra judicial procedures, indefinite detaining and torture of prisoners, as well as legalizing broad domestic surveillance of Americans.

Compared to now, no one noticed.  Yes, the Bush-Cheney team was mocked, reviled and despised by Democrats and much of the world (how did the old joke about Cheney's arrhythmia go? W was just a heartbeat away from the presidency?).    There were, of course, protests.  But it wasn’t like it is now: a fraction of the population noticed; a fraction cared; a fraction could tell you what was happening.    Proof of this is provided by the re-election of Bush-Cheney.

Enter the chaos of the Trump presidency.  Although posturing as another rightwing power mad leader, Trump gives no evidence of discipline, control, theories or system.  “I have a gut,” he brags.  “My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward.  I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.” (The Art of the Deal).  

I’m sure Dick Cheney, alive and well with someone else’s heart in his chest, sees that all this chaos could be put to good use for the rightwing.  After all, Trump’s tweets, bleeps and blunders as well as the Mueller investigation are all a tremendous distraction.  Any reasonable Control could use it as a slight of hand to shove through all the pieces of the conservative agenda that were still missing.  And in some respects, this is occurring.  Trump’s surviving appointees are doing their best to dismantle the Clean Air Act, protections for endangered species, civil rights protections, etc.  And then there’s Brett Kavanaugh (although him we noticed).

But there’s also this: we are not at war.  And, as the midterm congressional election demonstrated, many more people are paying attention. Look at the number of presidential candidates.  Look at the voter registration.  Look at the crop of new women in Congress.  Look at the move to the left.

There’s a spiritual element I haven’t spoken to that I want to unpack: as a human race at least in the west, we’ve been taught to fear chaos and change and to court control.  But in the body, it is said that all diseases are control and cures are chaos.  Cancer is, while it disrupts our lives, very systematic in how it builds and grows.  And all our medical “cures” for cancer (basically cutting (surgery) burning (radiation) and poisoning (chemo) are chaotic.  They are designed to disrupt the system of cancer and to make it break down and cease to grow and build on itself. 

Prior to this presidency, we’ve been aware of a cancer growing in our body politic: that cancer is complacency, ignorance and lack of engagement.  Cheney and his ilk exploited that cancer, encouraged it and grew it.  Witness the elimination of the fairness doctrine which allowed Fox News to rise.  Maybe unwittingly, Donald Trump is the chaos we needed to wake up from the dream that we could have a real democracy without acting like the sovereign people we are on paper.