Green Book & BlacKkKlansman

In October 2019, I watched the movies Green Book and BlacKkKlansman at Iibadashi Ginrei Hall which is a movie theater usually showing double features. I paid a mere 1,500 yen to watch both of them. It is a reasonable theater in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. 

Both of the movies are dealing with racial discrimination and had been nominated for Best Picture in the 2019 Academy Awards. In the end, Green Book won the Oscar. It was said that when the heart-warming movie was declared the winner in the ceremony, the director of the political movie BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee, got angry and nearly walked out of the hall. The two films have such story. 

I love both of them and watched them three times at theaters in 2019. 

A similar thing had happened three decades earlier. Driving Miss Daisy won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1989 when Do the Right Thing directed by Spike Lee was even not nominated for it. Each of them was also dealing with racial discrimination. Driving Miss Daisy is heart-warming, yet Do the Right Thing is deep, politically meaningful and so serious that I need to mentally and physically get ready before watching it.

And, in 2019, history repeated itself, so I can understand Spike's anger.

I prefer simple and heart-warming stories to thought-provoking ones, so I like two Oscar winners for Best Picture in 1989 and 2019 respectively better than two movies directed by Spike Lee in the same years. 

I would rather watch a movie with a smile.