Set in 1962 (and based on a true story), the movie stars Viggo Mortensen as Tony Vallelonga, an Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx who needs a job for two months while the night club he normally works at is closed for renovations. He interviews to be a driver for Doctor Shirley, and discovers that rather than being a doctor, Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a brilliant pianist who is now embarking on a multi-city tour of the Deep South. Being a black man, he needs a man of Tony's talents at navigating trouble with both finesse and his fists as needed.
What follows is your classic road movie with two diametrically opposed characters who gradually learn more about each other and develop an unlikely friendship. It's a trope as old as time, very Hollywood, but in the hands of two such fine actors, you can't really quibble. Mortensen is fantastic as the volatile and brash Tony, a man who is deeply prejudiced at the beginning, but chooses loyalty to his boss over his innate racism at key moments, thereby widening his horizons. Ali is magnificent as the dignified and mesmerizing Don, a man who can speak multiple languages, play classical and pop music with effortless grace, and has specifically chosen this tour over the easier option of staying in his swanky digs over Carnegie Hall and being revered by the Park Avenue crowd. He is out to make a point, and as he and Tony venture deeper into the Jim Crow South, things get dicier.
The title of the film is based on The Negro Motorist Guide Book, a guidebook that helped African-American travelers in the South find motels and restaurants where they could stay and dine. The movie's focus tends to be on Tony's indignation at how Don is treated; the same white people who sing his praises and are enraptured by his music are the ones who firmly remind him that he needs to use the outhouse or cannot dine in the whites-only club, only play there. There are two moments when they are stopped by cops, one time in the South and another time in the North, which makes for a very tidy contrast - however, we all know that just because you're in the North, you're not guaranteed to encounter a friendly white cop. Moments like that are where this movie is far too simplistic, and while it illustrates a lot of the blatant racism and horrors of the Jim Crow South, you see them more through Tony's eyes as a white man who is justly indignant, rather than the much more interesting perspective of Don Shirley.
The one moment in the film that truly resonated with me was when Tony kept badgering Don about how he didn't know enough about "his people." He doesn't eat fried chicken, he doesn't know who Aretha Franklin is, the list goes on. Eventually Don blows up, describing his childhood where he was sent to Leningrad as a young boy to study music and even though he can play Chopin like no one else can, record companies insist he plays popular music because there's no call for a black concert pianist. He isn't black enough for black people, but certainly not white enough for white people, so where does he belong? And that's when I knew that was the story I wanted to hear, but was sadly not going to get. Reading his Wikipedia biography subsequently, Don Shirley is a fascinating man, and this movie would have greatly benefited from taking his point of view more often. Unfortunately, when you have a screenplay written by three white men, that's going to be difficult to achieve.
Green Book is a good movie and benefits from two excellent actors giving the material all they've got. However, it makes an excellent case for the need for diversity in Hollywood behind the camera. There was an opportunity to tell a truly deep and meaningful story about a brilliant African-American man that most people have never heard of. Instead, we got a story about an Italian-American with a heart of gold who learned that black people have a hard life and his family should stop using racial slurs. This movie is good, but man, it could have been great.
No comments:
Post a Comment