Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Driving Miss Daisy is the sixty-second film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. As was discussed in the Best Picture review for Rain Man, the last couple decades of the twentieth century saw a shift in the sort of film that could win Best Pictures. These were still big crowd pleasers to some degree but suddenly topics like therapy and mental illness began to pop up in the winning and nominated films. It was not enough just to be good, a Best Picture winner should be important too, tackling some sort of social cause. Certainly this might be the only explanation for how Brice Beresford’s Driving Miss Daisy won in 1990. Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy) is a well-to-do Jewish woman living outside Atlanta, Georgia. By her own admission she has never “had one ounce of prejudice” in her although it doesn’t stop her from constantly barking at her Black housemaid Idella (Esther Rolle.) When she accidentally crashes her car into the neighbor’s yard, Miss Daisy loses her insurance and her son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd for some reason) hires an older Black man named Hoke (Morgan Freeman) to be her chauffeur. At first Daisy is harsh and distrusting of Hoke but over time she softens and the pair bond over their road trips and the discrimination they both experience in the South. Driving Miss Daisy is exactly the sort of film that has proven effective to Academy voters across generations. It’s about racism but not in the thorny sort of way something like Do The Right Thing is (Spike Lee’s masterpiece from the same year was not nominated.) Rather its a story about how prejudiced white people can learn not to hate Black folks if they just bond a little. A cross racial friendship will solve society’s ails. There really should be no doubt that this is a film that means well, but also without question it is a sanitized version of racial reconciliation meant to play well with mostly white audiences. Billed as a friendship between Daisy and Hoke, the story is almost entirely told from Daisy’s perspective. She comes around to Hoke only after he has been sufficiently subservient and their connection grows when she starts to see antisemitism target her community in a similar way that racism has plagued the Black community forever. Never do we get to see Hoke reckon with the indignity thrown his way by nearly everyone, including this woman employing him. Its a candy coated story that is so sweet it becomes noxious. Beyond even the core problems with the story, Driving Miss Daisy just isn’t all that compellingly produced. Unexceptional in its cinematography or staging. Hans Zimmer’s score is mostly decent save for a couple of truly wild moments of emphasis. Then there are the performances. Morgan Freeman is sort of obsequiously subservient as Hoke but the moments in which he challenges Daisy are powerful. As for the titular passenger, I suppose if Daisy is meant to be an almost irredeemable crank then Tandy accomplished that well. Again, at no point did I think that Driving Miss Daisy intended to trivialize southern racism or stoke any sort of division. As well intentioned as it may be, it is still deeply problematic and, frankly, pretty uninspiring to watch. Maybe in the eyes of the Academy it is about something important, but it is far from an important film. 2/10
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