Green Book (2018)

In the 1960s, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga was hired to drive and assist piano virtuoso Dr. Don Shirley on a concert tour through the Deep South. The catch: Shirley was black, and the South continues to struggle with cartoonish levels of racism.

I can’t quite describe this as a “buddy comedy,” because it wasn’t. There were jokes, and the ending was positively American, but it wasn’t a comedy. 

If anything, it was a drama with jokes thrown in. 

What it was, instead, was a story of two people, from different backgrounds, cultures, and lifestyles, learning how to accept one another, in a context in which they are clearly uncomfortable. 

Viggo Mortensen (Tony) alongside Mahershala Ali’s (Shirley) both do an outstanding job of expressing their characters’ emotions, in everything from Ali’s piano playing to Mortensen’s gruff, New York-Italian style of dealing with problems. 

2018’s “The Green Book” is a reminder that racism isn’t something that happens to other people in far off lands, it happened here, in the 1960s, less than a lifetime ago. 

There were plenty of moments that made me uncomfortable as an audience member - everything from the overt racism of slurs, to the “sneakier” behavior of cops abusing power, sunset towns, and the still-recent history of “separate but equal” facilities. 

I didn’t recognize the music that Ali played, but that’s hardly the point of the movie.

I absolutely recommend this. Take a date, take a friend, go by yourself. It’s worth the ticket price and your time.