Green Book
Reviewed by Peter T. Chattaway
IT’S BEEN A wild few months for Green Book.
The film, which is based on the true story of an African-American pianist and the Italian-American who served as his chauffeur and bodyguard during a tour of the Deep South in the early 1960s, came out of nowhere to win the People’s Choice award at the Toronto film festival back in September.
The film’s crowd-pleasing depiction of racial tensions and racial reconciliation immediately positioned it as a contender for the Oscars – but then there were controversies. Controversies over things the filmmakers had said and done in the past, controversies over how the filmmakers used certain words while promoting the movie and, most essentially, controversies over how the film itself handles its subject matter.
It’s a prime example of how the intense politicization of the movie awards season has made it difficult at times to receive movies as movies, with all their strengths and flaws.
The basic concept behind the film is as simple and appealing as they come: It revolves around two characters who are opposites on many levels, and it lets the actors riff on their odd-couple dynamics in entertaining ways.
The pianist, Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), is refined and dignified, to the point of being aloof (he recalls that his ex-wife had “terrible grammar” but was still a “good person”), while the chauffeur, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), is a street-smart nightclub bouncer who is prone to punching people out and using ethnic slurs and stereotypes. (“Do I look Irish?” is one of his milder retorts, when someone asks if he’s a cop.)
What makes the story resonate a little more than the typical odd-couple movie is the way it complicates assumptions about race and class, particularly within a period setting.
Here, between the two protagonists, it is the black man who represents the upper class. He lives in an apartment above Carnegie Hall, he even sits on a throne when Tony shows up for a job interview, and he is painfully conscious of the fact that he has little in common with the African-Americans who populate the dingy motels that he is forced to stay in during his tour. (The movie’s title refers to a guidebook that let black Americans know which places would accept them in the segregated South.)
The film’s depiction of Tony, meanwhile, doesn’t exactly challenge conventional ideas about working-class Italians – if anything, the film, co-written by the real-life Tony’s son Nick, positively revels in such stereotypes. But Tony’s relationship with Shirley does inspire Tony and his family to connect with the higher-culture aspects of their own ethnic heritage. Tony’s in-laws argue over which Renaissance artist did what, and when Tony hears a man call Shirley a “virtuoso,” Tony remarks, “That’s Italian. It means he’s, uh, very good.”
For some viewers, however, the film isn’t complicated or challenging enough.
The opening scenes, for example, appear to be setting up the idea that Tony is a racist who will eventually have to overcome his own prejudices. In one key moment, he tosses two drinking glasses into the garbage because they were used by a couple of black repairmen – and he does this when no one is looking, which would seem to indicate that his racism is internal and genuine and not just something he does to fit in with other people.
But the film never builds on that moment. Tony’s racism never seems to get in the way of his job, and he even claims that he is “blacker” than Shirley because he enjoys fried chicken and the music of black rock stars whereas Shirley does not. The film also suggests that there is at least a partial equivalence between the racism endured by Shirley and the ethnic prejudice that Tony is exposed to as a Catholic Italian in Anglo-Saxon territory.
What’s more, it is eventually revealed that Tony is remarkably tolerant when it comes to Shirley’s homosexuality. The film’s explanation for this is plausible – Tony says he has been working in nightclubs his whole life and knows that entertainers can be “complicated” – but in some ways it is the film’s ultimate signal that Tony is, and always has been, a basically good guy. No explicit reckoning with his earlier racism is needed.
The fact that the film paints such a positive portrait of Tony and his family while portraying Shirley as a stuffed shirt who needs to loosen up a bit has also rankled some people, not least the real-life Shirley’s relatives, who are never depicted in the film.
And at a time when black filmmakers are telling hugely popular stories that reflect their own culture – from the Oscar-winning Moonlight to the box-office hit Black Panther – the fact that Shirley’s story is being transmitted through a film written and directed by white people has led to charges that Green Book isn’t “progressive” enough to win Best Picture.
But Green Book has its defenders too, including musicians who knew Shirley during the era depicted in this film, such as Harry Belafonte and Quincy Jones. And of course, the film is ultimately the story of two men, not just one, and if it has caught on with audiences outside of the awards-politics loop, it is partly because it draws us into their relationship and the way it crosses barriers of all sorts and finds harmony in their differences.
There is one key scene that hints at the film’s appeal. Shirley decides he has had enough of being excluded from the very establishments where he is expected to entertain, and he abruptly calls off a show so that he can find a place to eat. He and Tony end up at a blues club, where he plays a lively mix of classical and jazz music for the benefit of the mostly black crowd. Shirley is more relaxed than ever, and the patrons love what he plays.
It’s a little like the parable Jesus told about the masses being invited to a banquet that the social elite rejected – and on that level, it’s like a little taste of heaven. TAP
Read more of Peter T. Chattaway’s reviews at www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat
