Driving Miss Daisy 2: In Reverse

Rating: 4/10 (23 March 2019)

After "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989), "Dances with Wolves" (1990), "Forrest Gump" (1994), "Crash" (2004) and, now, "Green Book," I guess Hollywood is just going to continue patting themselves on the back for not being racists because they honor pictures where stupid white protagonists are taught to respect racial others as human beings. As opposed to the infamous failure to nominate a racially more challenging and sophisticated picture such as "Do the Right Thing" (1989) for Best Picture the year "Driving Miss Daisy" won it, this time, they gave Spike Lee an Oscar, too, for "BlacKkKlansman" (2018), a film that I think has its own faults, but, at least, it's not simply a message picture of "racism is bad, but look how far we've come" for the dumb and dumber. And, at least, there's some cinematic flair to Lee's film, as opposed to this modest improvement upon a filmed play such as "Driving Miss Daisy."
In quite a few ways, "Green Book" is a modest improvement upon "Driving Miss Daisy" in that it largely tells a similar story in a similar way without itself coming off as quite hypocritically racist. It's about the least one should expect after 30 years of cinematic and social changes--or lack thereof. In it, another white person who also faces some prejudices against them (in this case, for being an Italian American; in Miss Daisy's case, for being Jewish), and again from that white person's perspective, travels by car with an African American through the Jim Crow South. (Both movies even privilege their "home" turf, as it were, as not as racist as other places. In "Driving Miss Daisy," Atlanta somehow came off as not nearly as segregated as Alabama, and in "Green Book," the two are welcomed home to New York by a friendly police officer in contrast with the backwater cops they meet on the way to Birmingham.) They bond, and through their experiences with their black friend, the white protagonists stop being racist. But, this time, the white person is driving, and the black man sits in the backseat!
To be fair, Mahershala Ali's Don Shirley is not entirely, or at least not atrociously as much so, the Magical Negro trope that Morgan Freeman's Hoke is in "Driving Miss Daisy." The historically-based character of Shirley has a life outside of helping the white protagonist with their character arc, which the movie addresses, if only almost entirely through the lens of the white protagonist and ultimately how it affects him. In a way, it's a traditional sidelong-glance biopic, where the life of the more interesting figure (Shirley) is seen through the point of view of a more common folk (Viggo Mortensen's Tony), as a surrogate for the spectator, for one assumes because that's how the storytellers see us spectators. Additionally, Shirley is not the white writer's fantasy of a subservient African American that is Hoke. Moreover, Miss Daisy's conversion is rather unconvincing, but "Green Book" leaves little doubt that Tony has transformed. Ali and Mortensen are good actors, too, which helps. Clearly, they were dedicated to their characters (most conspicuously by Mortensen gaining 45 pounds for the role).
Nevertheless, a movie that's written and directed by and mostly made by white people, through the perspective of a white character, as a surrogate for an intended white audience, to feel good that they, too, have overcome historical racism doesn't really cut it as authentically anti-racist. This comforting, hand-holding seminar from a narrow view of a vast and historical problem, another whitewashed picture about prejudices against racial others won't transform anyone.