REVIEW: Green Book

Directed by Peter Farrelly
2018 Comedy Drama
2 hours 10 minutes
From Universal

Starring
Viggo Mortensen
Mahershala Ali
Linda Cardellini

Perhaps it's a bit formulaic, for some maybe a little predictable but what there should be no doubt about is this is over two hours of pure joy, lots of laughs and superb acting.  As I like to point out when it's true, this is a heartfelt tribute to friendship.  I'm ok with calling it a buddy movie or a road flick, too, but it's notched up because it's based on a true story and shines a light on an important but sad part of American history.

Set in the early 1960's a tough but tender-hearted, temporarily out-of-work, Italian bouncer hesitantly hires on as a driver who will run interference for a black pianist who is embarking on a concert tour throughout the south.   Naturally things don't go smoothly.

The green book of the title concerns a real travel guide for blacks that says where they can eat and lodge during the scary days of Jim Crow and sundown laws.  
  
The story spends a lot of its energy on these two men learning about one another with most of it is done through sparkling banter and some seriously funny moments.  The scenes where they are confronted by ignorant bigots are, of course, the most dramatic.

The bouncer has problems with his temper, racial prejudice, subject and verb agreement, overeating and a few other things.  The pianist is very talented, polished, well-groomed and well-spoken, greatly concerned with decorum, who has spent much of his life in a cocoon, doesn't know a great deal about his own race and feels apart from them.  He also has a drinking problem.

There is a scene I liked where the men stop their Cadillac on the side of a rural road and a group of black field hands stop working to gaze in astonishment that the black man is sitting in the back seat while the white man is driving.  It spoke volumes.

This film has been released at this time, of course, to be fresh in Academy voters' minds to qualify for Oscars and that should be no problem.  Mortensen continues to display what a fine actor he is but what is especially pleasing here is his naturalness in playing comedy.  He would be up against some stiff competition to pull off a win but he sure as the hell should be nominated.

Playing the real-life aristocratic Jamaican-born Don Shirley, Ali is equally impressive and he should get another Oscar nomination (he won best supporting Oscar a couple of years ago for Moonlight).  The talk has been about which category Ali should be included in.  He is clearly a co-lead and in that regard deserves a nomination for best actor but if both he and Mortensen are both up for best actor, they could cancel out one another.  So perhaps he'll be up for a supporting Oscar.  I hope so.

While we're at it, if Ali really played the piano in those early scenes, I am mightily impressed.  And if he didn't and it's all about clever camera work and trickery, I am mightily impressed.

I haven't seen Cardellini since her impressive turn as Cassie in 2005's Brokeback Mountain.  As Mortensen's supporting Italian wife, she is a delight.

The supporting cast... all those Italians, Shirley's two fellow concert musicians and all the bigots... is on the mark.  This is Farrelly's first solo, big-screen directing effort (he has co-directed with his brother) and he acquits himself quite well.

In real life the two men remained good friends until the end of their lives a few months apart in 2013.

There is an old-fashioned feel to Green Book that I see as working in its favor.  When films transport us away from the chaos and uncertainty of real life, keep us entertained and laughing, they are something special.  



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