Two Best Pictures

Driving Miss Daisy (1990) and 12 Years a Slave (2013)

One can’t look at the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences without being puzzled by how often it gets things wrong -- particularly when it comes to the Oscar for Best Picture. Just look at 1990, when the award for Best Picture was given to Driving Miss Daisy.

Driving Miss Daisy isn’t really a bad film. It’s quite competently made with two great actors (Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman) in good form. With a script adapted from a well-written play, it doesn’t stray too far from its stage origins. It’s fine. But Best Picture?

The members of the directors’ caucus of the Academy didn’t think enough of the film to nominate director Bruce Beresford for his work on the film (though he'd been nominated, justly, for his work on Breaker Morant and Tender Mercies.)

There were certainly more entertaining films released in 1990, such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Batman, and the immortal Road House. 

There were more emotionally satisfying films like Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally, and the film most likely to make a man cry, Field of Dreams. 

There were more artistically audacious films such as Henry V, My Left Foot, Drugstore Cowboy, and UHF. There were even films that were more bold and insightful on the subject of race, like Glory and Do the Right Thing, either of which would have been a far better choice for Best Picture.

And even more unfortunately for this blog, Driving Miss Daisy doesn’t have much in the way of church or clergy. But there is some.

The film tells the story of an old woman, Miss Daisy (Tandy) who needs a driver. Her son (Dan Aykroyd) hires an African American chauffeur (Freeman) and an unlikely friendship develops between driver and driven. Miss Daisy is Jewish and attends synagogue, but this blog is about Christian churches. The synagogue in the film seems nice enough, though people seem to attend more to meet social than spiritual needs. In fact, Miss Daisy accuses her daughter-in-law of a horrible social crime: “socializin’ with Episcopalians."

A Christian church makes a brief appearance for a funeral service where the choir gives a spirited rendition of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” (About the best thing about the church and the synagogue in the film is their good music programs.)

There is one prominent Christian clergyman in the film, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King.

When the great civil rights leader speaks at a local dinner, Miss Daisy is excited and happy to attend. She doesn’t invite her friend Hoke to join her (though he drives her to the event, of course -- and she has an extra ticket). Though she claims to be a supporter of civil rights, she doesn’t think of Hoke as a person worthy of such an august social affair. So Hoke listens to the dinner speech on the radio in the car outside of the dinner.

Beresford made a really odd filmmaking choice in this scene. We hear King’s speech, but we don’t see the speaker. Using film footage of King speaking or using an actor to play the role, but instead, we hear a tinny recording of the great man, experiencing the speech rather like Hoke listening in the car. This choice might have been forced on the filmmakers by the King estate, notorious for their tight grip on the handling of MLK’s image.

A much more worthy recipient of the Best Picture Oscar was 2013’s 12 Years a Slave. Director Steve McQueen (not to be confused with the iconic, but deceased, actor) brought the true story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man, who was abducted and sold as a slave. As the title indicates, he was enslaved for twelve years.

It’s a powerful story and a helpful balance to the romanticized images of slavery presented in older films like Gone With the Wind.

And though we don’t see depictions of formal churches or clergy in the film, there are three informal gatherings of slaves that could be called “church” for good and ill.

Northup’s first owner, William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), gathers his slaves for the reading of Scripture, and he seems to believe it is for their benefit. He reads passages from the Gospels, including Jesus’ command to care for the “least of these,” without seeming to grasp the irony of the moment. Ford’s good intentions contrast sharply with Northup’s second owner, Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), who only reads the slaves passages of Scripture admonishing them to obey their masters and justifying his use of the whip. Far better than either of these is when the slaves gather by their own choosing to memorialize a murdered companion, comforting each other as they sing “Roll, Jordan, Roll”. This feels like the only true church in the film.

The combined churches and clergy in the two receive a Movie Churches rating of Two Steeples. That nasty Epps really brings the averages down.

Small Town Movie Churches 4: Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)

I’ve seen pastors do all kinds of stunts to tweak church attendance (or at least, Sunday School attendance). I’ve seen pastors give visitors prizes like chocolate and Starbucks coupons and movie tickets. I’ve seen pastors agree to sit in the dunk tank for hitting attendance goals. Pastors have agreed to shave a beard or even their scalps if all the seats were filled. But until I saw Fried Green Tomatoes I hadn’t seen a pastor willing to commit perjury to get someone to come to church.

Based on Fannie Flagg’s novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, this 1991 film (taking just the first three words of the book’s title) is intended to be a tale of female empowerment. The story of Kathy Bates as Evelyn, a woman trying to save her marriage to a negligent husband, bookends the film. She meets an old woman (Jessica Tandy) who begins to tell her about two young women in the small Southern town of Whistle Stop between the World Wars.

Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) was a rebel who spends time at the poker hall and speakeasy. Her friend Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker), is a good girl who leads the youth ministry at the First Baptist Church. (Spoiler: we're supposed to be very surprised at the end of the film that when we find out the old woman telling the story was Idgie. Who else would have been telling this story?)

It seems that Whistle Stop, Alabama has something in common with other small towns all over the country -- like Weed, California, and Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Years ago, I was a groomsman in a friend's wedding in rural northern California. The venue options for a bachelor party were limited, so we ended up in a Motel 6 room, and bottles were passed. I talked to a local, and she said people in the town divided into two groups, the churchgoers and the party people. People pretty much had to choose between being a part of one group or the other. This isn’t true of all small towns we’ve been to. In Texas, we heard many people talk about how you’ll see the same people in the bar Saturday night as you see in church Sunday morning. We heard the same thing at a bar in Oklahoma years later.

Whistle Stop seems to be the same kind of place. Idgie is a regular at the poker hall and Ruth can be found at the church, but their friendship draws them to the other’s territory. As Ruth teaches a Sunday School lesson on Job, Idgie listens in through the window. On Ruth’s birthday, Idgie takes her to the pool hall where she gets her friend drunk.

But the two friends are separated when Ruth leaves Alabama to marry a man named Frank and goes with him to Georgia -- but Frank is an abusive husband. Ingie visits Ruth, and with the help of friends (including George, a large black man) takes her pregnant friend back home.

Ruth has a son, and Frank goes back to Alabama to get this son. Frank goes missing, and Idgie is accused of murdering him.

During the trial, the Reverend Herbert Scroggins (Richard Riehle) is called as a witness. Idgie has known him her whole life, but that's not necessarily a good thing. As a small child, she attended a wedding the Reverend conducted and used a mirror to reflect light into the minister’s eyes. Idgie's brother died, and the Reverend conducted the funeral. And when he preached against the poker hall, Idgie shouted and mocked from the back of a truck as she rode to the poker hall, calling him a snake. Their relationship was, to say the least, testy.

So Idgie is concerned about what he'll say at her trial. He's offered a Bible to swear on, but he says he’ll swear on his own, then testifies that on the night of Frank’s disappearance, Idgie was at a church revival.

The prosecutor questions whether the revival wasn’t two days before Frank’s alleged murder. The Reverend asks, “Have you ever been to a Baptist revival? That revival went for three nights.”

Of course, Idgie wasn’t at the revival. She was at the poker hall, but she was called away because of a disturbance at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Frank had come to steal away his child. He attacked Idgie’s friend, George, and another friend, Sipsey (Cicely Tyson) hit him over the head with a frying pan. Frank was killed. Idgie came to the cafe and helped cover up the killing.

But the Reverend’s false testimony was enough to free Idgie. After the trial, she asked him why he was willing to lie after swearing on a Bible. He admitted the book wasn't a Bible --  it was a copy of Moby Dick, and he committed perjury in exchange for Ruth's promise that Idgie would regularly attend church. Idgie says she would have rather have gone to jail but apparently keeps to Ruth’s commitment.

Now, it’s swell that the Reverend Scroggins cares about Ruth and Idgie, but integrity is essential to a pastor’s call and ministry. He shouldn’t be telling lies of any kind, let alone under oath in a court of law. (And no, swearing on Melville rather than the Word of God is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.)

Still, Scroggins’ compassion does save him from out lowest Movie Church Steeple rating, so he gets a little better than our lowest rating. Two Steeples for First Baptist of Whistle Stop.