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‘Green Book’ Review: A Road Trip Through a Land of Racial Clichés

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‘Green Book’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Peter Farrelly narrates a sequence from his film featuring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.

“Hi. I’m Pete Farrelly, co-writer and director of “Green Book.” “Green Book” is the story of Don Shirley, a concert pianist played by Mahershala Ali, who, in 1962, had to go on a tour of the south. He hired a bouncer, Tony Lip, played by Viggo Mortensen here, to drive him. This is a scene early on in the movie when they stopped to get a pack of cigarettes. And Tony Lip gets out, finds a jade stone on the ground, but it’s next to where they’re selling gemstones. Obviously somebody dropped it there. He puts it in his pocket. Thinks, well, it’s on the ground. I can have it. And is accused of stealing it by the other band members. The point of this scene is — it’s a true story, by the way — that it’s something that Tony Lip told us — we had audiotapes of Tony Lip telling stories about Dr. Shirley trying to teach him. He said, you know, I love that man — Dr. Shirley — and the reason I do is because he was always trying to make me smart.” “Before we pull out, Tony, we need to have a talk.” “Eh?” “Oleg told me what you did.” “What’d I do?” “You stole a jade stone from the store.” “No, I didn’t.” “He watched you do it.” “I didn’t steal no stone.” “You picked it up and put it in your pocket.” “I picked up a rock off o’ the ground. I didn’t steal from a box.” “Now, why would you pick up a rock off the ground?” “I don’t know. Because it ain’t stealing. It’s just a regular rock.” “And why would you want a regular rock?” “To have. For luck, maybe.” “A lucky rock?” “Yeah.” “Let me see it.” “The thing that really comes through here is a parent-child relationship is forming. Dr. Shirley is educated. Tony Lip’s — sixth grade education, but really didn’t pay attention after third grade.” “Take it back and pay for it.” “And he’s being schooled by Dr. Shirley. Dr. Shirley — if he’s gonna be spending a couple of months with him, he’s trying to help him in the way he talks, the way he speaks, the way he treats people, the way he acts.” “Do not drive, Mr. Vallelonga.” “It helps that Dr. Shirley’s in control when he doesn’t get out. He doesn’t do anything. He sits there. And Tony has to turn to him, and Tony has to stretch around him, and he’s just such a child in this scene, the way he reacts to everything. It’s like if you caught a five-year-old stealing gum at the grocery store. That’s how he reacts. I liked Viggo having to turn toward him, and it just felt like he was at a disadvantage in that scene. And it helped empower Dr. Shirley that he could just sit back and control it.” “If you’d like, Tony, I’d happily buy you the stone.” “Don’t bother. You took all the fun out of it.”

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Peter Farrelly narrates a sequence from his film featuring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.CreditCredit...Universal Pictures
Green Book
Directed by Peter Farrelly
Biography, Comedy, Drama
PG-13
2h 10m

“Green Book” is a road movie set in 1962, long before Apple or Google Maps or Waze, but as it makes its way from New York to Alabama and back, you might nonetheless imagine a little GPS voice in your ear telling you what’s up ahead.

There is virtually no milestone in this tale of interracial male friendship that you won’t see coming from a long way off, including scenes that seem too corny or misguided for any movie in its right mind to contemplate. “Siri, please tell me they’re not going there.” Oh, but they are.

“There” includes an entire subplot devoted to fried chicken, which the African-American member of the buddy duo has never eaten. He eventually (spoiler alert) acquires a taste, thanks in part to the urgings of his white counterpart.

The crispy poultry motif figures heavily in the “Green Book” trailers, conceivably as a warning. Every suspicion you might entertain — that this will be a sentimental tale of prejudices overcome and common humanity affirmed; that its politics will be as gently middle-of-the-road as its humor; that it will invite a measure of self-congratulation about how far we, as a nation, have come — will be confirmed.

Because the white guy, an erstwhile nightclub bouncer named Frank Anthony Vallelonga and known as Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), is behind the wheel of a car while the black guy, the pianist and composer Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), rides in back, “Green Book” seems to invite comparison to “Driving Miss Daisy.” But its pedigree is slightly different, reaching back through the Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor comedies of the 1970s to “The Defiant Ones” in 1958, which starred Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as runaway convicts in the Jim Crow South.

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Mortensen and Ali in the film, set in 1962 and based on a real story.Credit...Universal Studios

If you want to get scholarly about it, you could stretch the tradition even further, following literary critics like Leslie Fiedler and D.H. Lawrence and seeing Tony and Don as manifestations of a primal American archetype. Huck and Jim. Ishmael and Queequeg. Natty and Chingachgook — bonded cross-cultural pairs that symbolically redeem America of its original racial sin.

[Read more about the real Don Shirley.]

“Green Book,” written and directed by Peter Farrelly (of the once notoriously naughty Farrelly Brothers), is based on a true story. Tony Lip and Don Shirley were real people, and the movie grounds their journey to the South in piquant historical details. The book referenced in the title was a guide used by black motorists to help them avoid the dangers and indignities of road travel, especially below the Mason-Dixon line. Don’s record company, having booked him on a tour through several southern states, hires Tony to serve as a de facto bodyguard as well as a chauffeur.

He also becomes, inevitably, a kind of white savior, intervening to shield his employer, when he can, from white people who have no such obligation. The hypocrisies of segregation are laid out — Don is celebrated as an artist and denied service at hotels and restaurants — as are the brutal and insidious manifestations of white supremacy.

The real drama, and also the comedy, is between the two men. The contrast of their temperaments is not subtle. Don, highly accomplished and educated — he’s “Dr. Shirley” to most, “Doc” to Tony — is formal and fastidious, an aesthete and an intellectual with no patience for vulgarity or sloppiness. He’s also gay, though this fact is handled with a discretion that borders on squeamishness. Tony is a caricature of Italian-American family-man exuberance. He’s voluble and emotional and constantly smoking, eating, or both at the same time. At one point, reclining in a hotel-room bed, he folds a pizza in half and shoves it in his mouth. Not a slice of pizza. The whole pie.

His warm, earthy authenticity has a salutary effect on Don, whose hauteur masks a deep loneliness. In return, Don refines Tony’s taste and dissolves his prejudices. As I said, there’s not much here you haven’t seen before, and very little that can’t be described as crude, obvious and borderline offensive, even as it tries to be uplifting and affirmative.

And yet! There is also something about this movie that prevented me from collapsing into a permanent cringe as I watched it. Or rather, two things: the lead performances. (Linda Cardellini, as Tony’s wife, Dolores, is wonderful too, but she’s only around at the beginning and the end.) Mortensen, plump as a mortadella, doesn’t so much transcend the ethnic clichés of the role as chew through them, emerging into a zone of vaudevillian poetry. Ali, more or less the straight man in the double act, approaches every moment with a razor-fine wit, a lively awareness of the absurdity of the situation that may not belong to the character alone.

These men are good company, even if the trip itself might cause some queasiness.

Green Book
Rated PG-13. Some mean white people, but they’re not all like that. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: A Road Trip With Friendship and Clichés. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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