Green Book

The title Green Book refers to a travel book that was published from 1936 to 1966, and was used by black people to find hotels and restaurants in the South that would welcome them.  Many of the hotels were often seedy or unkempt, but travelers who were "colored" obviously had no choice.  The film itself is a heartfelt, if not more than a little familiar, true story of two strangers from different worlds who learn to put aside their differences.  It has some moments of real power, and even some humor to lighten the tone now and then.  It also has two great leading performances from Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.

Mortensen is virtually unrecognizable (and speaks with an effective New York accent) as Tony Vallelonga, who starts the film off as a bouncer at a nightclub, and basically gets through in life by his ability to (in his words) "bullshit people".  He seems to constantly be eating junk food, almost to the point that it becomes a running visual gag in the film.  He is coarse, and completely lacking in style and grace, but he is close to his family.  His home always has various friends and relatives passing through like supporting characters in a sitcom, while his loving and supportive wife (Linda Cardellini, once again wasting her talents in a "wife" and "mom" role that gives her little to do) looks on.  On the other end of the spectrum is Ali's Dr. Don Shirley, a concert pianist who is guarded and cold, but whose exterior hides a lot of personal pain.  He is a black performer who is accepted by white society for his music, but they do not accept him personally.  And because he is frequently seen in the company of whites, and lives in a palace-like apartment above Carnegie Hall, black people often don't see him as one of them.  His anger at not being truly welcome in either culture comes to a head in an effective scene late in the film where he claims he's too black for white people, and too white for blacks.

The movie is told mostly from Tony's point of view, which may be in part due to the fact that Tony's real life son, Nick Vallelonga, helped develop the script.  We see Tony's home life, his friends, and we mostly see the story through his eyes.  That doesn't mean that Don is underwritten or unused.  It's just that we obviously get a lot closer to Tony as a character.  This is also probably intentional, as Don is supposed to be somewhat of a mystery to the character of Tony, and also to the audience.  He does open up during the course of the film, but not so much that we feel like we truly know him as a person.  The real life Tony and Don went on to become good friends, we learn at the end, and remained so right up to the end.  Director Peter Farrelly (best known up to now for making successful comedies such as Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary) is depicting the early stage of their friendship, where they are learning to trust each other, so it's understandable if Don remains somewhat guarded throughout.

As the film opens, it's 1962, and the nightclub that Tony works at is forced to close down for two months.  Temporarily unemployed, and with a family to support, he must find a way to keep money coming in.  The best offer he can find is to act as a driver for Dr. Shirley while he takes a two month concert tour of the Deep South.  The movie has already established that Tony is prejudiced in an earlier scene where he sees his wife offering glasses of water to two black men who have come to do repair work in the kitchen, and when they are gone, he throws the glasses in the trash bin.  However, he needs a steady paycheck, so he takes the job.  It's hard for Tony to leave his family for so long, and it also means he will have to write to his wife when he can.  In one of the film's more comedic subplots, we see Don teaching Tony better diction when he writes, and how is increasingly improving and romantic letters back home make him the talk of his large family.

Green Book makes much of the difficulties that Dr. Shirley experiences as a black man traveling through the Deep South of the time period.  There are the obvious racist cops and drunks that he encounters, but there is also how his friendship with Tony is looked at by others.  Many are surprised to see a white man chauffeuring him all over.  And in a lot of instances, Shirley experiences prejudice even at the places that he has been invited to play at.  In one instance, he is hired to play at someone's home, but he is not allowed to use their bathroom.  And when one of his stops requires him to perform in a luxury hotel, they will not permit him to eat at their restaurant.  But the most powerful moment in the film occurs when the car breaks down in the middle of the road, right in front of some black field workers, who simply stare at Don, almost as if they are judging him.  It is a quiet and effective scene that perfectly captures Don's dilemma of not fitting into either "world". 

That scene is not only effective, but quiet and understated, and it lets the emotion speak for itself.  If it had more scenes like this, this could have been a great movie.  Don't get me wrong, I very much enjoyed it, but I also found the film a bit overstated.  This is not a subtle movie in the slightest.  It wears its emotions on its sleeve in just about every scene, and the dialogue always makes sure to spell out what a character (usually Tony) is thinking.  There are also numerous scenes where the two run into racist Southerners, and these sequences not only seem to be borrowed from other films, but almost become repetitive, as they always seem to follow the exact same structure.  Obviously, the movie should not ignore the tense racial atmosphere in the South at the time, but I also think there should have been just a little less stereotyping on display, as pretty much every Southerner they run into acts the exact same way.

The strength in Green Book lies in the development and the performances of the two leads.  The movie itself is somewhat safe, and not exactly hard-hitting, but it still manages to get some good individual moments that hint at a much better film.  As a movie about a friendship that slowly builds between two strangers from different walks of life, it can be undeniably powerful.

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