Five stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional profanity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.23.18
Period biographical dramas rarely are this amusing.
Comedies rarely are laden with this much shrewd social commentary.
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| Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen, left), having promised to write frequent letters to his wife, is surprised when Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) expresses more than a casual interest in the process. |
Sharply etched characters rarely are portrayed so precisely — so perfectly — by the actors cast to play them.
In a word, Green Book is superb: a thoroughly engaging slice of gentle filmmaking that veers from droll, to instructive, to heartbreaking, to laugh-out-loud hilarious. It’s a richly entertaining, feel-good experience that plays, at times, like a perfect blend of Driving Miss Daisy and The Odd Couple.
But such a simplistic elevator-pitch descriptor does a disservice to director/co-scripter Peter Farrelly’s marvelous road picture, and the two memorable, lovingly depicted characters who actually made this trip together, in the real world.
Talk about your “journey of discovery.” That phrase carries a lot of weight here.
The time is 1962. Bronx-born Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) — who goes by Tony Lip — is an imposing, well-dressed bouncer at New York’s Copacabana Club. Thanks to a facility for calculated charm that blends well with his capacity for rough stuff, Tony has managed to straddle this realm of celebrities and mob honchos, where he’s respected without getting wholly co-opted by the latter.
He’s a classic Damon Runyon archetype who might have stepped out of the era popularized by Guys and Dolls. Tony is far larger than life — literally, as Mortensen gained 30 pounds and an impressive paunch for the role — but still, at the end of each night shift, a devoted family man who returns home to his beloved wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and their two young sons.
Their home is the locus for a noisy, extended Italian family that chatters, bickers and fills a room with the boisterous revelry of a 24/7 party. These sidebar relations are deftly and memorably defined: the curmudgeonly father, the smart-ass brother, assorted cousins and spouses. Utter chaos delivered via thick Bronx accents.
When the Copa closes for renovations during the final two months of the year, Tony is left without employment (aside from occasional wagers, details of which are best left discovered as they occur). Potential financial relief arrives with an unusual job offer, as chauffeur for a certain Dr. Don Shirley. Tony dresses up for the interview, expecting a medical office and some sort of world-famous surgeon.
Instead, he’s escorted into a posh private apartment directly above Carnegie Hall, where Dr. Shirley (Mahershala Ali) turns out to be a world-famous concert pianist.
And is African-American.
We’ve already noted that although Tony is outwardly tolerant of many things, he possesses a reflexive aversion toward “colored” folks, due mostly to his neighborhood upbringing. To make matters worse, Shirley is as aggressively refined, prissy, highly educated and condescending as his absurdly decorated home. The two men have virtually nothing in common, except mutual wariness.
But Don nonetheless sees potential in Tony, because the job is far from ordinary: an eight-week concert tour that will begin in Manhattan, but then descend into numerous Deep South venues that remain firmly mired in segregation and Jim Crow restrictions (the most pernicious being so-called “sundown” laws). Don needs more than a driver; he needs protection.
The situation will be complicated further by the shameful absurdity of Don not being allowed to eat, or stay, in the restaurants and hotels where he performs. Tony must plan their trip based on input from the so-called Green Book, a travel guide to safe lodging, dining and business options for African Americans, where they won’t be refused service, humiliated or threatened with violence.
At first — still in the comparative safety of New York — Tony views Don as little more than a paycheck, and the money is good. Don, in turn, regards Tony as a necessary annoyance. Tony knows how to behave; he’s been outwardly courteous to goombahs his entire life. Such patience proves essential, because Don overcompensates; he conceals years of victimized frustration behind elegant snobbishness and the imperious bearing of a court ruler.
He treats Tony like a misbehaving child. Tony sighs and takes it.
But then, as the journey heads ever southward …
Ah, but that would be telling.
The joys of this script — by Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie and the actual Tony’s eldest son, Nick Vallelonga — come from experiencing its surprises as they occur.
Both actors are superb. Ali, in a role worlds away from his Oscar-winning supporting performance in 2016’s Moonlight, radiates culture and — more than anything else — dignity. His bearing is regal, his every movement calculated, controlled and impeccably proper. It’s long-crafted artifice: part of the pose that is expected when Don performs, and which has (sadly) become a façade that he’s unable — afraid — to abandon.
But the pretense isn’t quite perfect. Ali’s gaze is pained. And lonely.
The telling moment comes early, when Tony stands on his hotel room balcony late one night, and looks down to see Don’s trio members (Dimiter D. Marinov and Mike Hatton) seated at the poolside patio, chatting with two attractive women. Don, quietly working his way through an entire bottle of Cutty Sark, sits on his own balcony (this still being New York), observed only by Tony.
Cue a soft, plaintive strain from Kris Bowers’ instrumental underscore.
(Bowers also doubled all of Ali’s dynamic keyboard work, although you’ll constantly assume that the actor actually is performing. It is, without question, the most persuasive bit of piano “ghosting” ever captured on screen.)
Mortensen, in stark contrast, is a laid-back, unapologetically coarse slob. His eating habits are hilariously repulsive; you won’t believe what he does with a pizza. Don always rides in the back seat, which is just as well; Tony uses the front passenger side as a garbage dump for all manner of discarded soda cups, half-finished candy bars and grease-laden sandwich wrappers. The man eats constantly, inevitably talking with his mouth full.
Mortensen is fearless: loutish, forever smoking and swearing. Few actors have gone full-on slob so memorably (although Pierce Brosnan comes to mind, when he strode through a hotel lobby, unkempt and clad only in tighty-whiteys and cowboy boots, in 2005’s The Matador).
Despite all this, Tony is ferociously street-smart and perceptively philosophical in his own right. He’s comfortable in his own skin, and at ease with the world, in a manner that Don — preferring to be above the world — can’t imitate.
Cardellini brings just the right blend of tenderness and strength to Dolores, the stable and resilient yin to Tony’s overbearing yang: a steadfastly loyal wife and homemaker who holds the family together. He may be imposing on the street, but he melts like butter in her presence; Cardellini persuasively gives Dolores that power over him.
Incidental sidebar characters reflect the best and (mostly) worst of human behavior, as the two-car entourage — twin powder-blue Cadillac Coupe De Villes — descends into the Deep South. It’s difficult to determine which is more distasteful: the overt, vicious hostility of thuggish barflies; or the superficial smarm of upper-crust aristocrats who conceal their racism (not really) behind false smiles and condescension.
Tim Galvin’s production design is impeccable, from the noisy clutter of Tony’s modest Bronx apartment; to the staggering, Liberace-meets-Beethoven opulence of Shirley’s studio apartment; to the dilapidated, ramshackle grimness of the “safe” apartment complexes recommended in the Green Book.
(Nick Vallelonga, who recalls visiting Shirley’s apartment as a young boy — “It was like when the door opens in The Wizard of Oz, and you go from black-and-white to color” — admits to being stunned by this film’s faithful reproduction of same.)
More than anything, though, this film is highlighted by the grace with which Ali and Mortensen deliver this saga’s numerous messages, through the words and behavior of these two unforgettable characters. The humor is always organic to the story, the instructive encounters heartwarming, and never forced.
Such sensitivity is likely to surprise people who know Farrelly — and his brother Bobby — solely from vulgar, over-the-top comedies such as There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber and the remake of The Heartbreak Kid. But it’s equally important to note that Peter Farrelly wrote the insightful coming-of-age novel Outside Providence, which was made into a little-seen but quite charming 1999 film. Ergo, his softer, gentler — wiser — side isn’t a complete fluke.
Nick Vallelonga deserves considerable credit as well, for having had the presence of mind to conduct hours and hours of interviews with both his father and Dr. Shirley, before they died within months of each other, in early 2013. Those sessions served as the springboard for what has blossomed into a deeply touching depiction of two dissimilar men learning to walk in each other’s shoes, during a particularly tempestuous time in this country’s history.
The result is cinematic magic: a film that invites — nay, demands — repeated viewing.
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