Film review: ‘Green Book’

Can Mortensen and Ali solve Jim Crow racism while driving around in a rented Cadillac? ‘Green Book’ is an attempt to find out.|

Can Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali solve Jim Crow racism while driving around in a rented Cadillac? The “Green Book” is an attempt to find out.

In 1962, Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a renowned concert pianist in need of a chauffeur to take him on a two-month-long tour through the Midwest and South. In a flowing robe and many gold chains, he interviews people trying to find the right match for the trials of “traveling while black.”

His most persuasive applicant is Frank Vallelonga, aka Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen and his Method beer belly), a “youse guys” roughneck from the Bronx who thinks “down South” refers to Atlantic City. Most days Tony beats up unruly customers at the Copacabana and runs a few side hustles - some of them are hard on the body, like the hot dog eating contest he gets into with an even more corpulent knockaround guy.

He needs a new gig and Don, who sits amidst ritzy bric-a-brac - including elephant tusks - on an actual throne atop Carnegie Hall, makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

When they hit the road, the two men quickly experience some friction, as when Tony insists that black people are obligated by their ethnicity to enjoy fried chicken.

When confronted with a drumstick waved in his face Don says, “I can’t do this.” The pianist is sharp-dressed and reserved in the back seat, reading books and asking Tony for quiet time... but he’s nursing some pain that causes him to down a bottle of Cutty Sark every night.

Tony leaves behind his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) who, like her husband, is unfamiliar with non-medical doctors (“He’s like a doctor of piano playing?”)

She has more affection for the mission after Don starts ghostwriting Tony’s suddenly more heartwarming letters home - he even gives a moving description of the beauty of Indiana landscapes, perhaps the first one ever captured on film.

For “Green Book,” director Peter Farrelly is separated from his brother and frequent collaborator Bobby, with whom he made “Dumb and Dumber” (not to mention “Dumb and Dumber To”). Farrelly makes a respectful picture that is sometimes too on the nose, as when the DeVille breaks down directly in front of a field of sweat-soaked African-American laborers hoeing in ragged clothes.

Like any long road trip, the film becomes a numbingly rote series of days. There are many morning shots of the car whistling down a lonely road, shots of Tony eating something unhealthy and saying something noxious, Don grimacing, playing the piano, drinking until he gets into trouble with a racist jerk, at which point Tony comes to bail him out. The police force is a constant source of dread and must be evaded, bribed or punched in the face.

As one Alabaman explains to Don, segregation is a “longstanding tradition” (like honoring statues of Confederate generals). When your excuse is “even Nat King Cole got beat up when he played here,” we have a problem. Still, Don tells Tony that dignity always prevails - until of course it doesn’t.

Watching Ali, there is always the pang of melancholy when we realize he might never again have a chance to be as heartrendingly wonderful as he was in “Moonlight,” but he and Mortensen try to evade as many clichés as they can.

The fine actors are unable to fix racism in this film, but they elevate the material.

In one impassioned speech about the prevalence of bigotry and oppression in America, Don asks Tony, “Does geography really matter?” 56 years down the road we ask ourselves: Does time?

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