Green Book

The Odd Couple (Two Guys Looking for Trouble)
or
"I Am Serious. And Don't Call Me 'Doc'"

The National Board of Review has come out with its list of superb films for 2018. Its choice for Best Film, Green Book, seems an odd choice, with so many other films to consider. Still, I can't carp about it; Green Book is an entertaining crowd-pleaser that is warm, funny, and takes on social issues—sure, they're social issues that might have been controversial in its setting of 1962, but now have the safety factor of self-evidence after the resolution of time and conscience.

"Based on a true story," it centers on the relationship between Dr. Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali, who continues to be, as he was in Moonlight, a magnetic presence), a respected jazz pianist and composer, and his chauffeur-muscle, Tony "The Lip" Vallelonga (played by Viggo Mortenson), hired to ferry Shirley around on a record company-sponsored tour through the deep South. The title of the piece comes from the booklet provided to Tony by Shirley's record label that lists the restaurants, attractions, and hotels that allowed "colored" travelers, its full title being "The Negro Motorist's Green Book," "prepared in cooperation with the United States Travel Bureau," and published between 1940 and 1967, three years after the Civil Rights Act. Basically, it was a segregationist's guide to the South to prevent "avoidable" lynchings.

Did I mention this was entertaining?

Tony needs the job, even thought it will keep him on the road and away from his family in the Bronx for two months (the tour actually lasted a year and a half)—his job as a bouncer at the Copacabana Club is on hiatus, as the joint's been shut down for a couple months "for renovations," and although he could get a job working for The Mob, he wants to avoid that. He's a casual racist, in line with most of his family—male relatives drop by when Tony's wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) hires a couple black plumbers to do some repairs, and that issue is brought fairly quickly when he is invited to an interview at Shirley's flat above Carnegie Hall.

Shirley is an imperious presence in his caftan, sitting on what amounts to be a throne, high above his interviewees, but Tony isn't too intimidated, he'll take the job if it's offered but he won't be heart-broken if it isn't. It's easy money and he can do it, and as Shirley says he comes recommended "from several reliable sources." He knows he has the job when Shirley calls him early in the morning and asks to speak to Dolores—he inquires if she is alright with depriving his family of him for two months.

The two couldn't be more different: Shirley is haughty and cultured, a man of with three doctorates, of measured speech and high expectations; Tony is just a mook witha 6th-grade education, smoking and eating simultaneously, his manners "get by" if you're not watching too carefully —Shirley is always watching—and there's a casual rogue to him, enjoying being the enforcer for Shirley's demands at the venues. The doctor may not always approve of his methods, but he is effective at getting the job done.

They are Mutt and Jeff, Felix and Oscar, Stan and Ollie, the one impeccable, refined and contained, and the other, hunched, gregarious and sloppy, the perfect combination of the formal and the absurd, from which comedy flows like seltzer from a spritzer. It helps tremendously that Ali has crack comic timing and a slow burn that's tamped down and merely simmers exquisitely. Even when Tony is chastising him for not knowing Aretha Franklin, or for ever eating fried chicken, Ali's Shirley notes the intemperance and moves on. 

But, he never smiles. Except for a dutiful exception when he stiffly, graciously accepts applause after a piece, Shirley never smiles, exuding dignity throughout the tour and the various engagements as a sign that he should be respected (as if the virtuoso playing didn't inspire it), with his command of the keyboard and his trio being his signs that he should be appreciated by his white, privileged audiences...even in such hostile territory as the South. But, the indignities are always there, in the sub-standard housing facilities that he must use, while his driver rests and relaxes...and can relax...in the white side of town.

The disparity between the two men couldn't be more apparent, but in the South of 1962, it really doesn't matter. Of the two, Shirley gets the worst of it—a man of total class, he is regarded as classless and isn't comfortable either among his all white audiences or his fellow travelers segregated by "the rules" of where they can stay. Tony, however, can move through the class structures with ease. He's white, but doesn't give off New York airs, and he's just as comfortable rolling bones with the black chauffeurs of the country-club set, as he is throwing his weight around among the locals.

The only time Shirley genuinely smiles while on tour.

Tony's also good at schmoozing—it's where he got the nickname "The Lip." He's able to talk the police out of charging Shirley with an incident at a steam-bath, but when he's called an ethnic slur by another cop, words fail him and he head-butts him and gets both he and Shirley thrown in the slammer.. Tony is far less tolerant of disrespect than Shirley is.

But, when it comes to where the rubber meets the road, both men have each other's backs despite that they're both doing the same job—looking for trouble: Shirley is taking the tour to honor Nat King Cole who was dragged off the stage and beaten during a similar tour, and Tony—well, that's what he does for a living.

Listening to a program where director Peter Farrelly was a guest over the weekend, he was described as a director of "raucous" and "bawdy" films—as part of the Pharrelly Brothers directing team, he helped make Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, and Me, Myself and Irene—and they've usually had some controversy attached to them (as Green Book does) for those films pushing the envelope on taste. But, the Brothers Farrelly always hinged their stories on a buried sweetness at the cores of their films, overshadowed somewhat by the raunchy material (Judd Apatow did the same thing—his films might have pushed the envelope on subject matter, but their messages were always a bit...conventional—"R" rated films with a "G" theme).

Green Book is ultimately a "kumbaya" film about racism, and with a jazz beat...where opposites can bend, yield, and come to an understanding if they do a little improvising, while respecting and trusting enough to pass the solo around.