Did your teachers ever give you shit for using the word āniceā in your written assignments? Well, Green Book is a nice movie, and Iām a professional writer now, so the jokeās on you, teachers!
Thatās really the only word for it: nice. Green Book tells the supposedly true story of a Black jazz pianist, Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), and his white driver, Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), as they go on a concert tour through the segregated South in 1962. Although theyāre both from New York, theyāre from entirely different worlds: Shirley (or āDoc,ā as Tony calls him) moves through the rarified air of highbrow culture, living in an apartment above Carnegie Hall where he perches on a literal throne. Tony, on the other hand, is an Italian American stereotype made sentient, a āwhattsamattayouā tough guy with a tenderly soft underbelly (quite literallyāthere are probably only two scenes in the movie that donāt have Mortensen lustily stuffing some sort of food into his maw).
The problem is that, when he first meets the Doc, Tony doesnāt like Black people so much. Hey, heās an Italian from Queens! Thatās how dey do it ovah der! So Green Bookās biggest red flag is that itās essentially another Driving Miss Daisy story about how to solve racism in three convenient acts. If only every racist white guy could go with a patient, thoughtful black man on a two-month tour of the Deep South!
Itās hard to get too mad at Green Book. Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen are both awfully good, and the script, for all its familiarity, is kind of comforting in its shtick-y predictability.
But like I said, the movieās really nice, and itās hard to get too mad at it. Ali and Mortensen are both awfully good, and the script, for all its familiarity, is kind of comforting in its shtick-y predictability. Best of all, Don Shirley isnāt the type of character we ever see in these movies: Heās prickly, snobbish, and deeply troubled, dealing with alcoholism, homosexuality, and a music industry that doesnāt really have a place for his unconventional talent. Heās wise, but not a āmagical Black man,ā and his character arc is substantially more significant than Tonyās.
A lot of people are going to like Green Book. Itās a good holiday movie, ideally suited for seeing with family members who might need a little prodding to be open minded; it makes its obvious case for tolerance and friendship, then bows and leaves. Sure, itās got some substantial problems, and it elides a lot of racial issues and nuances in order to sell a feel-good story. It probably wouldnāt have flown in the Obama era. But in the Trump era? Maybe we should take what we can get.
