7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 3.6 |
An elderly Jewish widow living in Atlanta can no longer drive. Her son insists she allow him to hire a driver, which in the 1950s meant a black man. She resists any change in her life but, Hoke, the driver is hired by her son. She refuses to allow him to drive her anywhere at first, but Hoke slowly wins her over with his native good graces. The movie is directly taken from a stage play and does show it. It covers over twenty years of the pair's life together as they slowly build a relationship that transcends their differences.
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Jessica Tandy, Dan Aykroyd, Patti LuPone, Esther RolleDrama | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Driving Miss Daisy belongs to that proud line of best picture winners that no one wanted to make and no one saw coming. It began as an off-Broadway drama by playwright Alfred Uhry, who based it on memories of his prickly Jewish grandmother and the African-American chauffeur who drove her for twenty-five years. The play detailing their evolving relationship was hugely successful and won numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for Uhry, but no studio could imagine it as a movie. Who wanted to see a film about two elderly people talking? Producers Richard and Lili Zanuck (Cocoon) immediately grasped how much more there was to Driving Miss Daisy. Uhry, a native of Atlanta, had been determined to write a play about real people, but he also realized that both of his main characters were, in his words, "out of the loop". Even if Jews were not victims of segregation and overt discrimination in the Georgia of the 1940s and 1950s, they were still considered "different". As much as Miss Daisy might like to pretend otherwise, her constant asides about her daughter-in-law's efforts to fit in with the Christian mainstream tell us that she knows where she stands. The triumph of Uhry's play was to present a window into an entire society through the often seemingly trivial interactions of two people divided by race, gender and social status but ultimately united both by their situation as outsiders and by even deeper forces like age and a sense of history. In Uhry's hands, and with the right actors to speak the lines, arguments over maps, speed limits and bathroom breaks became something else: a demonstration of how society may define our relationships, but the truly stubborn among us don't settle for those definitions. For the movie, Uhry reconceived the entire story, with assistance from director Bruce Beresford. The spare, almost abstract staging became a richly realized, fully populated town, where people who only rated a mention in the stage play became characters in their own right, and styles and fashions evolved before the audience's eyes along with the characters' advancing age. Still, the core of the story remained the deepening relationship between Miss Daisy and her long-suffering chauffeur Hoke, a gentleman at heart, who understood the requirements of survival in the Jim Crow south but also knew, with quiet determination, how to get his way.
A lovely period sheen has been cast over Driving Miss Daisy by Australian cinematographer Peter James, a regular collaborator with director Beresford. (Their most recent project was the 2010 film, Mao's Last Dancer.) Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray does not reflect any attempt to brighten or "enhance" the image with boosted contrast, and the blacks are suitably black, which is essential for scenes inside Miss Daisy's home, which James lit from sources outside the windows, so that portions of the frame are often cast in shadow. On a properly calibrated display, there's plenty of detail to be seen in those shadowy areas. Outdoor scenes, and scenes in other locations, are more brightly lit. The grain structure is natural and undisturbed by filtering or other digital tampering. The grain may seem heavy by comparison to contemporary productions, but it is appropriate to both the source and the period. Bright colors occur in Driving Miss Daisy (the Christmas party at Boulie's home is one obvious example), but for the most part the film's palette is as conservative as its heroine. The most notable exceptions are growing things such as flowers, tomatoes and vines. The only flaw to report is minor instability in the image that appears to result from "gate weave" or some similar phenomenon causing the entire frame to shift slightly. It's not a serious problem, but viewers whose eyes were educated by the digital age (and therefore are unused to an image created by film running through a projector) may find it disconcerting. Otherwise, the source material is in excellent shape.
The film's original stereo track is presented in DTS-HD MA 2.0, and it sounds quite good. Driving Miss Daisy may not be a surround showcase, but it features first-rate sound editing to accompany the expansive period environment in which director Beresford has situated his characters. For example, at Hoke's initial job interview, when he and Boulie walk across the factory floor of the Werthan mill, they have to shout over the sound of dozens of looms operating at full speed, and the din is one of many reminders that Boulie runs a thriving business, when he isn't tending to his mama's concerns. Similar bits of narrative information are layered unobtrusively into the soundtrack, and they come through clearly. So does all the dialogue, in accents that author Uhry has vouched for as authentic. Hans Zimmer's sprightly score sounds as good as it ever has.
In a famous line near the end of the film (it was used in the trailer, but stop now if you're exceptionally spoiler-allergic), Miss Daisy says to Hoke: "You're my best friend." When you don't know the context (which I won't describe), the line seems more sentimental than it is, but Tandy's delivery adds unexpected depth, because she makes it clear that the thought is something Miss Daisy has just now realized, to her great surprise. In both the play and the film, the line and the exchange that follow are fully earned because of everything that has led up to them. Neither of these two people could change who they were or the world into which they were born. But within those constraints they shared more of life than either they or anyone else ever expected. Highly recommended.
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Includes "Him", "Her", and "Them" Cuts
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