Green Book aims high, but just misses
It takes a bit of skill to make a safe film about an uncomfortable subject. History is littered with horrors. People have been, and continue to be, unabashedly awful to each other for a variety of reasons. Ignorance abounds, from sanctuary to street, from child to adult, from alderman to President.
Some of that ignorance is genuine—some people have never been given the opportunity to experience the world outside of their own narrow communities.
Some of that ignorance is willful, particularly when the political class courts the vote of those same narrow communities.
But ignorance is often maintained by a stubborn unwillingness to grow, to change, or to be wrong. America is saturated with people who will fight tooth and nail to remain ignorant in the face of overwhelming evidence, almost always for the sake of tradition, a tradition that always benefits one group over another.
And while that’s been commonplace in the South for as long as I can remember, those in other parts of the country aren’t immune. The same challenges exist there—they aren’t even particularly well hidden.
Green Book is a film about one of our most recent and most abhorrent horrors: segregation. It tells the story of an artist that challenged that horror, met it face to face, and an unlikely friendship that was borne out of the struggle.
Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen) has worked nightclubs his entire life. He’s a big guy, one that doesn’t take guff from anyone, and is more than willing to break a few bones to keep order in the Copacabana, even if it means knocking around a few made guys.
When the Copa closes for a few months for renovations, Tony is back on the street hustling. He needs few bucks to make ends meet for his wife and children. Because of his history as a tough guy, Tony’s name reaches the ear of Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), world famous jazz pianist and entertainer.
Shirley is due to make a tour in the Jim Crow South and is in need of a driver. But more than that, he needs a man that can handle any problems that might arise. The money is good, so Tony accepts. The pair make their way south, butting heads occasionally, but working out their own prejudices along the way.
As I mentioned, it’s hard to make a safe film about a difficult subject. Director Peter Farrelly, the same man who brought the world Dumber and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary, and Movie 43, does his best to navigate the waters of racism and discrimination without stepping on too many toes. Because we’re currently in the weirdest timeline imaginable, he does pretty well.
To be fair, much of this is due to the performances of the leads. Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali are exceptional actors and make the film enjoyable, despite a lot of heavy-handed writing.
There’s a lot of characters who state outright what should be inferred, spelling things out for audiences. Farrelly and writers Nick Vallelonga (Tony Lip’s son) and Brian Hayes Curie seem to think that people need to be spoonfed the underlying themes and that they need any unpleasantness to be lightly seasoned with humor and levity.
The film will play well to mainstream audiences for these reasons—it isn’t challenging, especially, or complex in any way that hasn’t been examined in other, better films. It’s enjoyable for what it is, however.
Like Shirley himself, the film hits all the right notes at all the right times, and the result is a tight, well-structured narrative that safely delivers the audience home in time for Christmas.
It’s easy to watch a film like Green Book and come away feeling good about the progress we’ve made as a country in terms of race. Segregation and Jim Crow are such obvious evils when viewed through modern eyes.
A better movie might have challenged viewers to look inward and challenge their own prejudices. A better movie might have shown where we are now as a country and what we might do to move forward.
Green Book is fine for what it is—a safe look at race relations in the broadest context possible. I, however, think audiences should expect more.