Butler's Cinema Scene

Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali

“GREEN BOOK”  My rating: B 

130 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Most of us will go into “Green Book” knowing — thanks to the ads — what the film is about. We can predict with some certainty what notes it’s going to hit, what emotional buttons it’ll be pushing.

None of this detracts from the movie’s immense pleasures.

The latest from director Peter Farrelly (yes, of the raunch-humor Farrelly Brothers) is a fact-based buddy film that dabbles in race and ethnicity, the universal appeal of music, and the glory of Detroit engineering at a time when bigger was definitely better.

It’s 1962 in NYC where Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) is bouncing drunks at the Copacabana nightclub. He’s Brooklyn Italian down to his toenails…which he can barely see thanks to his pasta-packed middle-aged spread.

Looking for a temporary gig while the club is undergoing a facelift, Tony signs up for a job driving a musician on  a tour of the Deep South.  And not just any musician.

Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a Phd. pianist who studied music in the Soviet Union, writes and performs classical scores (although on this tour he’s offering a popular jazz sound) and also has doctorates in psychology and liturgical arts. (The real-life Shirley also was fluent in six languages.)

Oh, yeah. He’s black, too.

But the money is good and Tony swallows his ethnic prejudices. He kisses the Missus (Linda Cardelli) goodbye and gets behind the wheel of a big aquamarine land shark for an eight-week tour leading up to Christmas. 

Linda Cardellini, Viggo Mortensen

The screenplay by Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie and especially Nick Vallelonga (son of the real-life Tony Vallelonga) immediately establishes the two travelers as hopelessly mismatched.

Tony eats with his fingers, talks in a dem-dese-dose accent, smokes incessantly and chatters endlessly.

Dr. Shirley dresses impeccably (whether in suit or smoking jacket), speaks perfect English and exudes an aura of imperious superciliousness. He treats his driver in the same way a third-grade teacher might handle a slow student. Tony’s friends back in Brooklyn undoubtedly would consider him “uppity.”

That the two men will end up great friends is all but preordained. But not before a series of misadventures as the black artist and the Brooklyn goombah navigate the sometimes maddening, often threatening world of the Jim Crow South. The film’s title refers to the guide that for years advised black travelers on where they could find food and lodging when they were banned from most white-run establishments.

Tony comes to appreciate not only Dr. Shirley’s astounding musical skills, but also the social injustice that he faces daily.

And Dr. Shirley ghost writes for Tony heart-melting letters to his family back home.

“Green Book” has been competently made; Farrelly is no film craftsman, and in this case he doesn’t need to be.

The movie’s great assets are its leading men, who fully inhabit their characters (dual Oscar noms are a distinct possibility), and a story that sends all but the grumpiest viewers out into the night with satisfied grins on their faces.

| Robert W. Butler