Search - Driving Miss Daisy on DVD

Wonderful Performances!

Grahame R. Davis | 03/28/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is simply a wonderful film! The performances by Jesica Tandy, Morgan Freeman, Dan Ackroyd and Esther Rolle are top-notch. The pace of the film is magnificent; there is not a dull moment in the entire one and a half hours. The set is lovely and period correct, as is the music and even the automobiles (mostly vintage Cadillacs). The chemistry between the two lead characters is very special, and Jessica Tandy certainly deserved the Academy Award for her performance. It is wonderful to see the progression over the period of several decades, and the friendship that develops between a proud, old Jewish widow and her newly appointed chauffeur. Dan Ackroyd as Miss Daisy's son is surprisingly effective also. An all round gem of a movie that deserves to be seen again and again."

Captivating story skillfully presented

Dennis Littrell | SoCal | 12/28/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Take an intense and flawless performance by Jessica Tandy (80-years-old when the movie was released in 1989) and a charming and slyly witty performance by Morgan Freeman (closing in on his fifties)--she a rich Jewish lady of the South, high-toned, spoiled, stubborn to a fault, he a black illiterate chauffeur, wise, patient and in need of a job--and we have the basis for a profound character study. What we are studying is both the character of the leads and the character of a way of life passing languidly before our eyes.



Adapted for the screen from his Pulitzer Prize winning stage play by Alfred Uhry and directed by Bruce Beresford, who previously gave us the remarkable Aussie classic, Breaker Morant (1980), Driving Miss Daisy is one of those films that is a work of art as well as a sociological discovery. Using beautifully constructed scenes carefully observed, Beresford allows us to recall a way of life and a culture that characterized the South during the middle of the last century. Freeman's Hoke Colburn is black; and, as he mumbles, "not all that much has changed" since the days of slavery. He still has to "yes'em" and shuffle his feet and show deference to white folk just to get by. Miss Daisy Werthan herself is rich and very tight with her money. She is also as racially prejudiced as a Dixie sheriff, but blind to her prejudices as she rages against the infirmaries of age.



The movie begins as she loses control of her car and drives it off the road and into a drainage ditch. She is shaken but unharmed. However her driving days are over. Her son Boolie Werthan, played with a fine touch and surprising restraint by comedian Dan Aykroyd, decides to get her a chauffeur. But she will not hear of it. She feels her independence is being threatened, and she doesn't need her son to tell her what to do. She can take care of herself. When Boolie arrives with Hoke, who is clearly black, Miss Daisy declares she will not have that man in her house.



One feels very strongly at this point how compromised the infirm are when they must rely on help from others. Let a stranger into your house and there is no telling where it might end. More that this though, is the underlying idea that dependence on people from a lower social-economic class will in fact have a leveling effect on class distinctions, and this is again something that Miss Daisy (in her ignorance of herself) will not abide.



But Hoke says he has wrestled some hogs in the mud in his time and has yet to let one get away, and he will do what is necessary to secure his position as Miss Daisy's driver. He comes highly recommended, and after listening to him, Boolie has little doubt he got the right man for the job. Miss Daisy of course is having none of it, and indeed she tells him to get out. She refuses to get into the car; she won't let him clean the chandelier or weed her garden. However, he doesn't give up. He takes all of her contrariness with good spirit and a sunny attitude, and then one day as she tries to go shopping on foot, he follows alongside of her in the car, and after some walking she is persuaded to hop in.



On one level this is about racial politics in the South, circa mid- twentieth century, and on another level it is about growing old and coping with life as one grows old. It is about taking care of oneself and getting the most out of life despite the handicap of a declining body. This applies to both Hoke and Miss Daisy. He knows that the physical demands of a chauffeur are more appropriate to his age than some of the physical work he did when younger, and she knows that to live the full social life that she desires, she needs help in getting around. Naturally, as the film progresses they learn from one another. At first they are drawn together by her sharp wit and his appreciation of somebody who can speak the truth with a barb and not mince words. Later they are drawn closer together by their mutual strength of character and the plain fact that she needs a driver and he needs a job. But finally they are drawn together because they become, as she suddenly observes one day, best friends.



This then is a story of love as well--love between two people from different walks of life. The differences are not just those of race and socio-economic status, or of religion and gender, but of world views and personal psychology, hers demanding and exacting, highbrow and imperial, his practical and easy-going, naturistic and democratic.



A tide is turned when her temple is burned to the ground by "the same ones as always" as Hoke informs her, which forces Daisy to realize that her enemies are the same as his. Consequently she attends a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. He prefers to wait outside in the car and listen to it on the radio. At once we see the commonality of their understanding, but still the differences of their stations in life remain. The dream and the reality are meshing but slowly, as all things do in the Old South, or, for that matter, most anywhere.



See this above all for the captivating performances by Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman, two of the great actors of our time, and for the touching and bittersweet story by Alfred Uhry. Also noteworthy is director Beresford's careful attention to detail and his unobtrusive guidance so that the film flows as sweetly as Tupelo honey on a warm southern day."