It seems like one of the favorites of the Oscar races has been defined. And it became clear after the recent Golden Globe where a comedy-drama biopic Green Book by Peter Farrelly was awarded for Best Comedy or Musical, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), Best Original Screenplay (Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly), and also after announcing the list of nominees for Oscar – Green Book was nominated in five categories including Best Film and Best Original Screenplay.
What is the Green Book? This is a guidebook for African-Americans and persons of color who travel across the South of the USA in 1962. The book has addresses of motels and restaurants that would accept people of “color”. A white sturdy man Tony “Lip” turns the pages of this shameful guidebook due to operational needs, so to say. He was hired as a driver and as a road manager by an Afro-American jazz pianist, “Doc” Don Shirley. He needs the driver with strong fists to have no obstacles during the concert tours across the South of the USA where the racial segregation was blooming in those time. Don with his authority could choose a safer route but deliberately took a risk because he considers these tours as his public mission. The screenplay is based on the real events from the lives of real people.
The biggest mystery of this film is its director. If you say that Peter Farrelly had never shot for the stars it would be partly true. Actually, he had gained his name, shooting comedies with maximally primitive humor on the edge with categories: Dumb & Dumber (1994), Kingpin (1996), Me, Myself & Irene (2000). Green Book for him is a tangible breakthrough.
In fact, the plot is predictable. Doc (to top it all he’s a gay) gets into trouble, Tony takes him out of these troubles. And sometimes Tony with his habit to solve most of the problems with fists needs Don’s help. Racists-policemen, the wild absurdity of segregation when a musician can’t dine in the same restaurant where he is going to play, constant debates of the exquisite dark-skinned gentleman and white-skinned rough simpleton, touching scenes in which Don teaches Tony to write tender letters to his wife – everything like in the book. But it’s interesting to watch. Why?
First of all, due to the central duet. The protagonists were played by brilliant actors: Viggo Mortensen (Tony), an Oscar laureate Mahershala Ali (Don Shirley). Mortensen gained a good dozen of kilos for the shootings. He perfectly accustomed to the role of the so-called “good with fists”. It’s involving to watch how his character gradually changes his awareness of racist injustice around him.
Ali’s part is more difficult. Partly it reflects the work in the form of his previous role – the drug dealer Juan in the drama Moonlight (2016) for which he got Oscar. Don is a combination, from one side, of an aristocratic equanimity, a certain stoicism, from the other – a deeply hidden feeling of injustice which can blast with emotions at any moment. To crown it all, you should add loneliness. Ali brilliantly depicts all this emotional spectrum. He and Mortensen make an ideal opposition and become entirely complementary opposites and, in front of us, they are making the history of friendship between two people who would scarcely meet under any other circumstances.
And that’s why it’s impossible to tear oneself away from the screen because Green Book is not only about racism and xenophobia segregation but about friendship, about the connection in nearly impossible circumstances. Basically, this is a changed and very alleviated but emotionally the same version of Moonlight.
And then it becomes clear why Green Book is being given and will be given awards in the States. Because this film is about something that has already saved the USA and will save again in Trump era – it’s about the ability to find a common language.
And when we learn to make such films in Ukraine – it will become the sign of Ukrainian cinema maturity.
Dmytro Desyateryk, The Day – specially for opinionua.com