01/03/2019

‘Green Book, the Academy’s Best Picture of 2019

When people around the world are peering on the US-North Korea summit; China/US trade talk and the ramification of the Brexit the forever billions of click ‘Like’ and glamorous event, the 2019 Oscar Award seems now like ancient history, comparatively. But I still mull over with the result of it. Probably because I only managed to watch two movies (the ‘Green Book’ and ‘The Wife’) and had missed most of the films, which were being nominated. And regrettably, I didn’t watch the Oscar night, the high fashion parade on the Red carpet, which I seldom missed them in the past. 

Comments from foreign and local newspapers and social media say that it’s ‘an embracement, ‘ it’s ‘upsetting,’ and it’s the Academy trying to play the ‘diversity’ card for the ‘Green Book’ to be awarded as the Best Picture of 2019. I happened to watch it before the nominations. The movie profoundly moved me, plus the fact that it was based upon an actual event. The story also humbled me on why an African American Classical/Jazz pianist would purposely decide to have a concert tour down to the American Deep South during the segregation in the 1960s.

For days, after watching the movie, I couldn’t get over with Mahershala Ali ‘s perfect ten (10)  performance to showcase of how a man, a gay can be so naked, so broken and so helplessness when he was under arrest by the police with another white gay man. But I laughed out loud when the two disparity men (black, rich/poor white working class) start to connect over the fried chicken when they reached to Kentucky. And of how Ali teased Viggo’s letter to his wife was like writing ransom notes, and Ali proofread most Viggo’s love notes thereon.

Almost towards the last leg of the tour, we saw Ali, the pianist shouldered the driving to allow Viggo, the driver, to have some rest at the back seat of the car, so he can rejoin his family, on time, for Christmas dinner. Viggo in thankfulness, extended the invite for Ali to join in, of course, immediately the pianist declined it graciously, and went back to his posh living quarter, in Manhattan, New York but after contemplating, he finally rang the door-bell. So, the film ends with love and friendship.

By the Hollywood Academy, ‘Green Book’ is the ‘Best Picture of 2019.’  It’s a low-cost production based on a heartwarming, God-glorifying story. We don’t know how true whether some of the small incidents were, but we saw in the movie the ‘bad cops/good cops’ in American highways. We saw that a phone call made to Mr. Bobby Kennedy that the two were freed from detention due to a traffic offense on the state highway that probably was not fictional at that time.

We saw a Concert pianist who painstakingly wouldn’t want to settle to play with other than the Steinway piano, at the end he spontaneously was playing at a tacky Jazz bar. My 2 cents of it that it’s a true embracement, if in any given period in history that the actuality of ‘Green Book’ reigned. I was upset that Mr. Mortensen was nominated for his acting, but he didn’t walk away with the Oscar. With Mr. Ali’s frame, the color story and the tailoring, all of his outfits on the film are picture-perfect, but was not nominated for ‘The Best Costume Design.’

I didn’t know that ‘Alibaba Pictures’ was also funding the success of this production. Mr. Jack Ma said that he had watched the movie three times and he said that he was reflective. It is a love story, and only HIS love can melt away all prejudice and pride in the human heart. I would want to watch the film again, and I also shall pray the ‘After Oscar Glow’ box office for ‘Green Book’ in China, as socially, and culturally it can be a reality of ‘Hit or Miss.‘

Isaiah55:9esv

‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’