Take an unforgettable ride
Based on a true story set in the year that the Yankees’ Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, “Green Book” is, first of all, a “Driving Miss Daisy”-like tale of racial reconciliation released at a time of renewed (if it ever went away) racial divisiveness in the United States.
Co-written by actor-writer Nick Vallelonga and based on his father’s life, “Green Book” is the story of two very different men: happy-go-lucky Copacabana bouncer Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen, who put on De Niro-like poundage for the role) and concert pianist Dr. Donald Shirley (Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali), who dresses impeccably and lives in an ornately decorated apartment above Carnegie Hall.
Temporarily out of work and with a loving wife, Dolores (a great Linda Cardellini), and young family to support, Frank reluctantly takes a job driving and serving as unofficial problem-solver for Shirley, who has a concert tour taking him and his trio through the Deep South in the eight weeks leading up to Christmas. Shirley is the only Afridirected can-American on the trip.
The “green book” referred to in the title is a real book published at the time, listing hotels in the South that will accept African-American patronage. The film is a semi-comic, semi-dramatic picaresque tale of a journey (a real-life “Orpheus in the Underworld”) of self-discovery taken by two men with very specific and different world views.
Frank is dubious and superior at first, refusing to carry Shirley’s baggage. Frank is a semi-goombah, who may be packing heat, and if he isn’t exactly John F. Kennedy when it comes to race, he knows evil when he sees it.
Shirley, who nurses a bottle of Cutty Sark at night and speaks Russian, is an alienated game-changer, a classically trained AfricanAmerican in a world not inclined to want one. Their New York City roots and the savoir faire, however rough-hued, those roots confer, give the men something in common. One of the film’s bits involves letters Frank has promised to write to Dolores, letters Shirley offers to help him with and which delight Dolores, her family and friends. Popular music buff Frank is floored by Shirley’s talent (“He plays like Liberace,” Frank tells Dolores), and Frank introduces Shirley to Little Richard, Aretha Franklin and KFC.
Directed by Peter Farrelly, whose previous films, co-
with his brother Bobby, were comedies, “Green Book” has a lot of comic flourishes in it, and the film could have easily descended into “My Cousin Vinny” territory, and it takes an unmistakable “It’s a Wonderful Life” turn. But what makes the film transcendent and holds it all together is the acting. Ali and Mortensen have a palpable fraternal chemistry, and they are great actors at the top of their game.
Cardellini is the film’s special ingredient, giving it another voice and emotional anchor. The culture police will call “Green Book” a whitewash and a fairy tale. Bigots will bigot. But it was one of the most enjoyable films I have seen all year, and if it becomes the Oscar front-runner I will not be surprised or unhappy.
(“Green Book” contains profanity, most of it in Italian, violence and sexually suggestive material.)