Green Book (2018) ★★★½
When I saw this at the cinema, I thought it was an enjoyable and thought-provoking film, though not one which struck me as one of the best I'd seen that year so I was a little surprised when it won the coveted Best Picture Oscar. However, having thought about it, the parallels to Driving Miss Daisy, another unlikely Best Picture Oscar-winner, are fairly clear to see, so it's appeal to the voters is probably not quite as remarkable as I first thought.
The film's strength is to shine a light on deeply ingrained racial prejudice in the southern states of the US, prejudice that was overt in those southern states to the point where black people were treated as second-class citizens. This is very different to the racism of one of the two main characters, Tony Lip, a man who bins the glasses his black plumbers used and casually refers to them as mulignanes (Italian for eggplant) to family members.
When he is paired with the educated, refined pianist Dr Don Shirley, their cultural clash sees both men being exposed to a culture they barely knew. Because of the arrangement between them, they were spending eight weeks together, so were unable to escape or reduce that exposure, so each man learns about the other, gradually softening and learning the power of understanding and acceptance.
I understand the appeal of the film's central message and, because it is based on a true story and real people, it's easy to understand Tony's shock and distaste for the southern racism whereby someone he is growing to consider a friend is treated appallingly, making him aware of his own prejudices.
Without the powerhouse performances from Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, I don't think the film would have been the critical or commercial success it was, and I was amazed to see the end credits in the cinema and discover it was directed by Peter Farrelly, one half of the team behind Dumb and Dumber, Shallow Hal, and There's Something about Mary. It is a very different film to those he made with his brother, Bobby, and shows he can make very good dramatic films as well as comedies.
Green Book is a film that feels important and one that tells a story which should be received by as many people as possible. Farrelly's deft direction enables this to happen – it's a film which could have been an unadulterated failure – but it is clearly well directed and, with Mortensen and Ali giving extremely good performances, it's a thoughtful, emotionally engaging, and tastefully funny buddy movie.
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