Future actor Frank Anthony Vallelonga, a.k.a. Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), is a nightclub bouncer in the Bronx in 1962. When the club closes for repairs, he hears of an opening for a driver for "a doctor," who turns out to be honorary doctor and star jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). Don seeks not just a chauffeur but an agent and bodyguard of sorts, because the Don Shirley Trio (the other two musicians being White) will be touring the Deep South in a racially inhospitable era. Despite pressures from family and friends not to associate closely with a Black man, Tony appears more concerned about spending eight weeks away from home and potentially missing Christmas Eve. He names a high wage, and Don matches it. You can guess the general shape of the story from there.
I don't mean to imply that Tony brings little to no racism to the equation, but he's more about biased expectations than hostility or a sense of superiority. He openly expresses surprise at some of the stereotypes that Don doesn't fulfill, and at his worst, he claims to be "Blacker" than Don. In other words, Tony exhibits the kind of White-on-Black racism we may be most likely to witness nowadays. It annoys Don a bit, but it's a far cry better than what they come up against in early-'60s Alabama, which Tony will not abide, for reasons beyond a paycheck.
Indeed, more of the ruffled feathers between Tony and Don pertain to, as Caddyshack put it, "the slobs versus the snobs," providing most of the comedy aspect. Tony is as blue-collar as they come, an absurd glutton with exceedingly little refinement in etiquette and language (gee, no R rating on that score?) and a fair amount of disregard for the law. By contrast, Don's principal flaws are prissiness and...well, "haughtiness" may not be the right word, as he can't do without a measure of humility in that setting, but he certainly has a few diva-like standards. In typical Hollywood fashion, they gradually grow more alike.
The LGBT tag? It's handled relatively quietly, as Don and some White man get caught in an unspecified illegal activity naked in the YMCA locker room. Tony, to his credit, has seen enough similar behavior not to hold it against Don, apart from the folly of taking that big a risk on the tour.
Oh yeah: The title refers to The Negro Motorist Green-Book. In the days of segregation, it was a must-have for anyone traveling while Black. Only on occasion does it appear on screen or get mentioned.
I was going to quip that all the A- and B-listers with Italian surnames must have had prior engagements, but Mortensen does a fine job of passing for Italian American to my eye. Looking over his career, I might just classify him as a "chameleon." He earned his Oscar nomination.
Meanwhile, Ali earned his second Oscar win. It's not that the role demanded a lot of complex emotion or capturing of tics that the actor doesn't normally show. He just keeps everything so perfectly crisp. Not to mention that he puts Ryan Gosling to shame on the piano.
My earlier reluctance to watch GB stemmed in part from objections by the Shirley estate. Like many viewers, however, I conclude that they are about as fussy as Don was. You'd think it was another BR. They say he wasn't all that chummy with Tony, but an unearthed recording indicates otherwise. They deny that he was so detached from Black popular culture. True or not, it makes a better story to build up the contrast and not make Don look as ideal as a Sidney Poitier character.
Speaking of which, perhaps the biggest complaint among viewers in general is the same one levied in retrospect at In the Heat of the Night: It'd be better to give the Black guy the most screen time. Well, I wouldn't mind a movie like that, and this one doesn't have the framing excuse of The Blind Side. But it so happens that a Vallelonga account was the main source of information before any of the filmmakers became aware of so many living Shirley relatives. Me, I still love ItHotN, and while GB might feel only slightly more modern, it's hardly shameful.
Congratulations, Peter Farrelly: You finally branched out and directed a film I can truly respect. Not just in itself, either, but as a Best Picture.
I was going to quip that all the A- and B-listers with Italian surnames must have had prior engagements, but Mortensen does a fine job of passing for Italian American to my eye. Looking over his career, I might just classify him as a "chameleon." He earned his Oscar nomination.
Meanwhile, Ali earned his second Oscar win. It's not that the role demanded a lot of complex emotion or capturing of tics that the actor doesn't normally show. He just keeps everything so perfectly crisp. Not to mention that he puts Ryan Gosling to shame on the piano.
My earlier reluctance to watch GB stemmed in part from objections by the Shirley estate. Like many viewers, however, I conclude that they are about as fussy as Don was. You'd think it was another BR. They say he wasn't all that chummy with Tony, but an unearthed recording indicates otherwise. They deny that he was so detached from Black popular culture. True or not, it makes a better story to build up the contrast and not make Don look as ideal as a Sidney Poitier character.
Speaking of which, perhaps the biggest complaint among viewers in general is the same one levied in retrospect at In the Heat of the Night: It'd be better to give the Black guy the most screen time. Well, I wouldn't mind a movie like that, and this one doesn't have the framing excuse of The Blind Side. But it so happens that a Vallelonga account was the main source of information before any of the filmmakers became aware of so many living Shirley relatives. Me, I still love ItHotN, and while GB might feel only slightly more modern, it's hardly shameful.
Congratulations, Peter Farrelly: You finally branched out and directed a film I can truly respect. Not just in itself, either, but as a Best Picture.
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