Green Book is quaint. It is the cinematic equivalent of a Hallmark card on race relations, there to make you feel good, reflect the real world in only the vaguest, gentlest of ways, and then be quickly discarded and forgotten. It is thoroughly lacking in any incisiveness or genuine insight, and its take on racism and transcending divisions is as deep as a thimble. The film’s perspective is limited and provincial at best, and often troubling or even insulting in its oversimplifications.
It tells the story of Tony Vallelonga, a hearty spark plug from The Bronx, enlisted to drive Don Shirley, a cultured piano player, through the South on his music tour. Green Book is founded on the tension between Tony’s profane, uncouth, salt-of-the-earth demeanor, informed by his working class Italian upbringing, and Dr. Shirley’s measured, mannered, and at times aloof bearing, informed by his position as a black man who has to operate in white circles. Along the way, the two clash and bristle, but inevitably find common ground and camaraderie through their shared experiences.
That in and of itself is not a bad premise for a film. There’s pathos to be wrung from the intersection of one man kept on the fringes of society because of his class and one ostensibly welcomed but always held at arm’s length because of the color his skin. There’s a common understanding that can be established between one individual who bears his prejudices until he’s forced to confront them in the context of a real person rather than an abstraction, and another who looks down on those less cultured and dignified than himself, until he learns to appreciate a certain heart that persists even where manners are lacking. And there’s catharsis to be had from the shared realizations of someone who’s the master of his own circle but ignorant to the realities of the wider world, and someone else who’s seen the world at a distance, but comes to know the greater warmth of community and family.
Green Book just doesn’t actually achieve any of that. It tries. God help it, the film tries. And if you squint, you can almost see where the movie gestures toward these ideas, and in exceedingly rare moments, even grazes them. But those noble efforts are lost in in the movie’s crayon-scribbled characters and incidents, its rampant clichés and archetypes in lieu of depth or complexity, and its propensity to reassure its audience who’s good and who’s bad rather than confronting the gray areas or the systems that reinforce the types of bigotry the film seems to shrug off so easily.
"He's teaching me how not to be an asshole, and I'm teaching him how to be black. No, I'm serious."
Some of that could be forgiven if the film, for all its attempts at feelgoodery and humor, were simply more pleasant to watch. Its characters are, at best, hard to like. Even setting aside Tony Vallelonga’s racism — the fodder for his “I’m a real boy!” transformation over the course of the film — the character is just obnoxious for most of its runtime. He is a pale cross between Tony Soprano and Homer Simpson, with an Olive Garden version of the former’s affect and perspective, and a charmless version of the latter’s doltishness, loyalty, and appetite. He is, even at his best, a large, foul-mouthed toddler, always having to be told not to give into his worst impulses. I’m a firm believer that characters need places to go and to grow in stories, but Vallelonga is far too annoying for too long to find much merit in his paint-by-numbers arc here.
Although Dr. Shirley is, at least, not so eminently grating as Tony is, the film still needs him to grow and change too, and so makes him rude and condescending for most of the film. It’s easier to swallow there, since while Dr. Shirley is occasionally a bit unreasonable, he’s usually either having to navigate spaces where he’s made insecure or put at risk because of his skin color, or he’s responding to one of Tony’s immature screw-ups. What’s more, Dr. Shirley has the benefit of being played by Mahershala Ali, who deserves better than this film and its script, but who adds layers to Dr. Shirley’s emotional reactions to the different challenges he faces and breathes life into a relationship between Don and Tony that’s poorly written, but still unavoidably the backbone of the film.
The best thing you can say about Green Book apart from that performance is that it’s nice to look at and listen to. Cinematographer Sean Porter not only captures the scenic beauty of the American South as Vallelonga and Shirley traverse it, but he uses wide shots of Dr. Shirley surrounded but isolated by his possessions to convey his inner loneliness and communicates the African American artist’s awkward place between white and black society better visually than the film’s ham-handed dialogue can.
At the same time, so many movies try to present their main character as a virtuoso or a talent or a star, when the actual presentation falls flat. Thankfully, that’s a pitfall Green Book avoids entirely. When Don Shirley sits down to play the piano, his performance takes your breath away. The audience is not only knocked back by the sumptuous melody and prodigious talent put on display, but intuitively understands how even hardscrabble Tony could be moved as well. Between the music itself, the masterful playing from double and real life pianist Kris Bowers, and Ali’s nuanced performance, each time Dr. Shirley sits down in front of a Steinway, it’s a treat.
"And now I'd like to play you a charming little tune called 'Heart and Soul.'"
But those gifts are squandered on a story of friendship that’s as predictable as its emotional highs are unearned. The film is rife with questionable moments. (For example, in one scene Tony cajoles and eventually persuades his African American counterpart on the merits of fried chicken.) Green Book aims for the old chestnut of the prejudiced but well-meaning tough with a heart of gold showing his true self. But its take on racism is so archaic, its prelude to Tony’s transformation so full of slurs and backwards views and general prickishness meant to be endearing, that when he finally does come around, it’s too little too late. Tony loves his family and eventually does right (or right enough) by his partner, but the film gives us too few reasons to root for him along the way. And its efforts to demonstrate Tony’s decency or Don’s failings and peccadillos are misguided at best.
There is occasional warmth, and even joy, in Green Book. But in the final tally, it’s a film that seems built for 1991 instead of 2019. Its “can’t we all just get along” and “both sides need to grow” messages ring hollow in the current era where there’s a growing acknowledgment that our cultural ills are neither so simple nor succinct. Even apart from its dime store cultural observations, hacky dialogue, and mealy racial pablum, it simply doesn’t give the audience enough in terms of stories or characters worth investing in. Not every Oscar-calibrated film has to make a truly powerful statement, but it should at least make for enjoyable cinema, and despite its strenuous and strained efforts, Green Book fails on both fronts.
