Nearly two years after winning the 2019 Best Picture Oscar, the controversy of “Green Book” has yet to abate.
The film, in which Viggo Mortensen played the white driver chauffeuring a Black musician on a tour of the deep south in the early 1960s, was described as “crude, obvious and borderline offensive” by The New York Times, while The Root slammed the film because it “spoon-feeds racism to white people.”
Mortensen, who received a Best Actor nomination for his performance, doesn’t accept the criticism that the movie faced.
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“It’s become a cliché to say, ‘Is this movie going to be the ‘Green Book’ of this year?’ Green Book has become a pejorative,” he said in a recent interview with The Independent.
Dismissing the backlash to “Green Book” as “hurtful and destructive,” Mortensen doesn’t agree that it was valid.
“Much of the criticism that was levelled at that movie was not only unreasonable, but it was inaccurate, mendacious and irresponsible,” he continued.
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“It’s based on a load of bulls**t and an axe to grind and little else,” added Mortensen. “Does it affect what I’m doing, or how people perceive me as an actor? Maybe it does. But I can’t really do anything about that.”
