Release Year: 1989

Genre: Comedy, Drama, History

Director: Bruce Beresford

Writer: Alfred Uhry

Stars: Jessica Tandy, Morgan Freeman, Dan Aykroyd

Literature's been pushing up Daisies for 140 years.

You've got Daisy Miller, Daisy Buchanan, and Daisy Mae Yokum. (Okay, so maybe that last one's not literature.) Add to that garden Miss Daisy Werthan, the most cantankerous and complicated of them all: an elderly Southern belle and the star of our film about race and friendship in mid-20th-century Atlanta.

Based on the stage play of the same name and released by Warner Bros. Pictures in 1989—twenty-five years after the Civil Rights Act—Driving Miss Daisy looks at the life of an affluent Jewish Georgia widow and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. It follows stubborn old Miss Daisy from 1948-1973, as she struggles to adjust to a new social order where blacks step out of their traditionally subservient role in the segregated South.

Across the country, (white) moviegoers flocked to see Morgan Freeman, as Hoke, drive Jessica Tandy, as Miss Daisy, around Atlanta. Critics loved it, too. Driving Miss Daisy won the Oscar for Best Picture; Jessica Tandy won as Best Actress, becoming the oldest woman to win the award at an impressive 80 years old. (Source)

Although Morgan Freeman was nominated, he didn't win; director Bruce Beresford wasn't nominated at all. But those were minor controversies compared to Driving Miss Daisy's reputation, emerging years later, as one of the worst Oscar-winners of all time. Even though it was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which also earned playwright Alfred Uhry an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Miss Daisy was scorned by many critics for being too tame on racial issues and downplaying the upheaval of the civil rights struggle of the '50s and '60s. (Source)

But the strong performances by Freeman and Tandy keep Miss Daisy driving almost thirty years later. Whether as an entertaining movie or an interesting historical artifact, it's still a deeply felt film about an unlikely but evolving relationship.

Many people would simply say you shouldn't care about this movie at all because of its whitewashed look at race and sepia-toned nostalgic view of segregation-era South when happy blacks served grumpy whites with a smile.

But it takes bravery to drive full-speed into any race discussion, don't you think?

More pointed films like Mississippi Burning (1988) and Do the Right Thing, which came out the same year as Driving Miss Daisy, were generally overlooked by the Academy.

Like Miss Daisy herself, Academy voters, and many Americans then and now, want to take it slow. Driving Miss Daisy, in which Miss Daisy only goes about 35 mph, may be more their speed. This film is a good way to learn how to drive before getting into rush hour traffic. It's the Driver's Ed course of race relations, whereas films like Mississippi Burning, Do the Right Thing, or modern films like Dear White People (2014) and Selma (2014) are the NASCAR drivers on the track, navigating trickier turns and tighter corners. Together, these films help show how to talk (and not talk) about race in the United States.

But how about this: even though the film was criticized for its soft-focus, humorous, almost nostalgic look at the era of segregation, it tricks us into confronting our reactions to racism. Just as we're going happily along smiling at Daisy's impatience with Hoke or enjoying Idella's sassy-black-maid character or marveling at Hoke's ability to put up with his cantankerous boss lady, it hits us. Behind all the banter are very difficult realities of race and class.

If the movie came right out and hit us hard over the head with the issues, we wouldn't have to think so much; we'd be told what to think. The film's approach to racism is more intimate. In getting to know Miss Daisy and Hoke, we see the subtle ways in which racism and prejudice infiltrate their way into the thinking of otherwise good and reasonable people. How it's easy to consider someone as "the other," and how deep knowing is the antidote for that.

Like Daisy, we discover something about ourselves in a deeply personal way.