On the 24. February awards Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a 91. Time for the Oscars. With the feature film “Green Book”, was nominated five times, there is also already a favorite. He could not fit better in the political discussion this time: The road movie and the beginning of the 60s in the American South. The black Pianist Don Shirley with his Trio on a concert tour, and hires for this purpose, the Italian-American Tony “the Lip” Vallelonga as a Chauffeur and Bodyguard. The two men become friends during the journey. At the end of have White and Black, redneck and Aesthete communicate.
At the Golden Globes the Green Book “as best Comedy was awarded to”; at the weekend, the Producers Guild of America named it the best Film. Especially the latter award, which is a clear sign that a triumph at the Oscars is not much in the way of that.
Tony Lip, and Don Shirley are real characters and they were actually on the road together. Lip grew up in the Bronx, worked in the night club, the Copacabana, and played in a higher age in the TV series “Sopranos”. Don Shirley was born in Florida, began at the age of two with the piano playing, and studied with nine music theory, composed symphonies and string quartets, and has had several doctorate – in psychology.
The green book is a travel guide
One might suspect that Don Shirley would give the more interesting movie character. However, the story from the point of view of Tony Lip is told. Comedy Director Peter Farrelly, shows the driver (Viggo Mortensen) as a racist with a big heart and a large appetite: His sandwiches he devours, as if he had ripped a Gazelle.
Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a cultivated musician, he lives almost like a Monarch above the Carnegie Hall. He studied classical music, but because of a colored pianist at the time, such a Repertoire is not a state, he moved to the Arrangements of popular Standards. The eponymous green book describes a kind of Lonely Planet for African Americans: at the time of the racial segregation Consul they commented on the guide, to find out what are the Motels in the United States, the Overnight stay was allowed.
Is far
on The question of how the Film is to the race issue, turning the network from now on a debate. The driver takes out his head from a fight with Rednecks, is about seen as typical for Hollywood cinema, widely used figure of the “white savior”: The white-skinned Savior is there to help the distressed Black. This does not need help from the outside, because he creates it himself.
The Chauffeur is also a figure of mediation between the Individual, perhaps even a racist swear word slips out, and the far more brutal the overall system of oppression. As an individual, Tony has to do little with the really bad racists in the South, so he is excused – and with him the majority of white cinema audience of today. Way is far. Also in terms of time.
In one scene, Tony accuses the pianist actually, he had forgotten “his people”, because he know Aretha Franklin is hardly a result of Shirley’s spiritualized music studies over the years (the poor Black man looks practically the same from the street; you work with the pickaxe on a box and wear rags). The peasant cunning Italo-Americans from the working class, however, is actually “blacker” because he suggests a day-to-day, to feed his family. Talk: Shirley to make time to loose and fried chicken to eat, and although with your bare fingers.
President Trump was not too long ago of the opinion that there were problems on “both sides”. “Green Book” goes so far as to make the difficulties of the Privileged and the oppressed are on the same level – and in a story from the time of racial segregation. A connection between Power and Repression, is there not even more.
What should the youth?
It is more likely that the musician will appear as the epitome of an art elite, and not as someone who is marginalized. “Green Book” is a Feelgood-Film, only it is the insurance of one’s own righteousness, which triggers the warm feeling.
To adjust the Oscars of the favorite as good, because the Gala is anyway in a crisis of Representation. While the organization is striving to make your membership more colorful and feminine, impact a movie like “the Green Book”, as he would have been 30 years ago turned. What to do with the identity of politically sensitive youth with such a concoction, if you “Black Panther”, a representation of a very much more sophisticated comic book adaptation, the delivery of successful as “Titanic issues”? The Academy, white has no answer to this, and proposed last summer, you could introduce a new price category for the most popular Film to honor such blockbusters as “Star Wars.” The idea occurred a month later, again in the bin.
Perhaps that explains the success of the “Green Book”: The more Hollywood with questions of Identity is employed, the less the Oscar want to hold movies to your audience the mirror. Could be that you don’t discover something, what you like.
as of 31. January, in theaters. Previews from tomorrow.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 22.01.2019, 18:28 PM
