Films > Film Reviews

Green Book

05/02/19

 
Not since Rain Man has there been such a turbulent and heart-rending ol’ road trip of a film.
Based on a true story, Green Books tells the tale of New York bouncer Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) turned chauffer for concert pianist virtuoso Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) as they embark on an ambitious and fraught tour of the Deep South. The film title refers to ‘The Negro Motorist Green Book’ - a guide that travelling African Americans used between the 30s and 60s to avoid locations where they would be at risk – and it is this book that our protagonists use to navigate their ride through a beautiful and intolerant America.
The film experience is the cinematic equivalent of a slick trip in a teal Cadillac with Mortensen at the helm, navigating heavy subject-matter with unparalleled grace, though never once diluting or diminishing the racist injustices that form the bedrock of the story. Every time you start to cosy up on the back seat, you run over a pot-hole of discrimination that causes you to bang your head on the roof. The luxuriant Cadillac also serves as the perfect air-tight, tupperware container for the intimate bottle-drama that unfolds between these men. From what starts out as a verbal battle of jabs and enmity - in Shirley’s case much verbal finessing, in Lip’s case, much verbal blundering - develops into one of the greatest accidental friendship to have rocked our theatres where, as corny as it sounds, both men emerge changed and life-affirmed, most of all Tony whose racist harbourings fall by the wayside.

Whilst the semi-illiterate Italian-American muscle-man with most of his thinking power in his fists might seem like a walking/talking stereotype, Mortensen (Captain Fantastic) dextrously unravels Tony’s humanity and brings more heart to the story than an organ donation surgery. Having spent many weeks with the Vallelonga family and many months eating Italian food en-masse in preparation for the character and physique, Viggo has proved himself as a true method actor as well as revealing a slight mania for moving as far away as possible from the character of Aragorn, creating in Vallelonga the anti-Aragorn, even if it gave him high cholesterol in the process.
Ali (Moonlight) dazzles in snappy suits, spouting witticisms and wisdom and, oh-so-casually playing the piano to prodigy level and making it look effortless. He undoubtedly owns the most stand-out moments of the film and captures the way Shirley shoulders the burden of being neither accepted by the white people of the South, who treat him as a cultural experience rather than a person, and the black communities that see him as selling-out his talents and betraying his race, with sensitivity and surprising humour.
Whilst much of the dialogue comes verbatim from interviews with the real-life dynamic duo, Shirley’s family have since complained that Green Book is skewed through Lip’s perspective and doesn’t accurately represent the way events went down. Whilst on balance it’s masterfully crafted, this is still a film guilty of being filtered through a white guy’s perspective that perhaps gold-plates and over-simplifies details in favour of spinning a better yarn.

Driven by a razor-sharp script, penned by Vallelonga’s son Nick, Green Book is so crammed with memorable lines that the movie itself rapidly morphs into one giant quote. It is an uproarious comedy and gritty historical biopic all rolled seamlessly together, where Lip sulking over being made to return a stolen lucky stone sits side-by-side with Shirley squaring up to the maître d' who won’t let him eat with the very guests he’s there to entertain in one of the most electric moments in cinema history.
Green Book isn’t going to need Vallelonga’s jade stone for luck when it comes to this year’s awards - it is to other films what KFC from Kentucky is to chicken drummers from Iceland – it is pure symphonic brilliance and a dead-cert triumph at the Oscars.
 
8/10