Review: Green Book
It's not anything that audiences haven't seen before, but Green Book is an unabashed crowd pleaser, sometimes old-fashioned and always formulaic in its approach, yet finding ways to refresh and transcend its cliches.
Inspired by a true story, the film revolves around the unlikely friendship between Italian-American, Bronx-born Frank "Tony Lip" Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) and famed African-American pianist Donald "Doc" Shirley (Mahershala Ali). The two men couldn't be more different - where Tony is gregarious, streetwise and ill-mannered, Doc is self-contained, sophisticated and highly cultured. Yet the pair, despite a time when segregation was still very much in effect, developed a deep respect and admiration for one another that lasted until their deaths.
The time is 1962, and Tony is in need of employment whilst the Copacabana, the club in which he works as a bouncer, is closed down for renovations. Enter Doc, who is about to embark on a two-month concert tour with dates in the Deep South and needs someone to drive him and to, as his record executives advise Tony, keep him out of trouble. Though Tony has been shown to be casually racist - he throws out two glasses from which black repairman had been drinking - the price is right and the men set off, with Tony toting The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide for black travellers on safe places where they can stay.
Predictably, much of the film derives its pleasures from the two men's clashing personalities. Mortensen and Ali truly have a crackling odd couple chemistry, and both continue to prove their immense talents in roles that viewers don't usually see them in. Tony is essentially a goombah with a heart of gold, one that could easily have fallen into caricature, but Mortensen embodies him with such heart and panache that one can't help but be delighted by his ways. Whether tucking into an entire pizza folded in half, glaring at Doc's valet until he puts the luggage in the car trunk, or mangling every word in the English language, Mortensen wrings laughs whilst conveying Tony's basic decency and solid sense of right and wrong.
Similarly, Ali makes Doc into a Henry Higgins-like character, who always seems to be correcting and condescending (he interviews Tony whilst sitting on a throne in his ornately decorated apartment above Carnegie Hall), but who possesses a deep well of loneliness and is well aware that his fame may bring applause but it doesn't prevent him from suffering the same injustices as the rest of the African-American people. Tony comes to realise this as well as he witnesses moments like Doc not being allowed in the whites-only restaurant of the venue where he is scheduled to perform, or being told to use the outhouse in the mansion in which he has just played. There's also the sense that Doc hasn't really been allowed to or allowed himself to let down his guard and loosen up a bit. When Tony cajoles him into trying Kentucky Fried Chicken for the first time, Doc holds the drumstick as if it were plucked straight from the ground, aghast that it should be handled with his fingers and not utensils. When Tony says they can just throw the bones out of the window, the way Ali has Doc toss the bone as if he were throwing a rose out to his audience is a beautiful touch.
Yes, there are some white saviour moments, but this is a journey in which both men learn from one another and better themselves in the process. Perhaps some may cavil that the film is too glossily presented, that it isn't gritty enough or too sanitised, that the storytelling is too simple. One doesn't have to spell everything out or delve so deep into the darkness to be an effective film and Green Book delivers its message with clarity, purpose and, yes, the intention to entertain. It may be a case of adding a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, but it doesn't make it a less bitter pill to swallow.
Green Book
Directed by: Peter Farrelly
Written by: Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Dimeter Marinov, Mike Hatton, Iqbal Theba, Sebastian Maniscalco
