IN ‘GREEN BOOK’ VICTORY, OSCAR CRITICS SEE AN OLD HOLLYWOOD TALE

Spike Lee, left, won an Oscar on Sunday for best adapted screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman,” and Mahershala Ali won best supporting actor for “Green Book.”CreditCreditMonica Almeida for The New York Times

By Brooks Barnes

LOS ANGELES — Something seismic was happening during the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night. The Hollywood establishment, excoriated for its longtime exclusion of women and minorities, recognized African-American production design and costume virtuosos for the first time. Asian-American filmmakers were honored. A movie about a gay rock star collected four trophies.

“I want to thank the academy for recognizing a film centered around an indigenous woman,” Alfonso Cuarón said as he accepted the award for best director for “Roma,” about a domestic worker in Mexico City.

But then came “Green Book.”

In a choice that prompted immediate blowback — from, among others, the director Spike Lee, who threw up his hands in frustration and started to walk out of the theater — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave the best-picture Oscar to a segregation-era buddy film. While admired by some as a feel-good depiction of people uniting against the odds, the movie was criticized by others as a simplistic take on race relations, both woefully retrograde and borderline bigoted.

It was the ultimate Lucy-pulling-away-the-football moment for those who had hoped the film academy was going to reveal itself as a definitively progressive organization. That the 2017 selection of “Moonlight” as best picture wasn’t a fluke. That the efforts to diversify its membership — albeit still 69 percent male and 84 percent white — had been transformational.

Adding to the anger over “Green Book” were the other choices available. Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther” was a cultural and commercial phenomenon, shattering a myth about the overseas viability of movies with Afrocentric story lines. “Roma,” a nuanced examination of class that was made by an almost entirely Latino cast and crew, had been showered with honors at the pre-Oscars award shows.

“Green Book” was made by a team that was predominantly white, including its director and writers.CreditNoel West for The New York Times

And Mr. Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” about an African-American police officer who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with the help of a Jewish surrogate, was a chance for the academy to recognize one of cinema’s singular, groundbreaking filmmakers — one who had been repeatedly overlooked in the past.

“A lot of people may have allowed their expectations of the academy to become too great,” said Todd Boyd, a cinema and media studies professor at the University of Southern California who focuses on popular culture and race. “We can see some signs of changes, but there has not been a full transformation.”……………….

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/business/media/green-book-spike-lee-reaction.html