3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Green Book

2018, Peter Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber) -- download

Do I need a That Guy tag, for the movies I tell myself I should be watching more of? We have been in a golden age of watching movies, where we have access to much much more than we can ever watch. We are no longer restricted to whatever is in the cinema, nor what might be in the handful of video stores in your neighbourhood. I suppose, with that in mind, if you lived in the right neighbourhood, you would also never run out of things you Should Watch (better tag?) but I guess its about ease of access. I can dial up a streaming service, or just hunt a pirate site, and usually find what I want. Still, we are kind of restricted in what we have access to in that "rep video stores" don't really exist anymore and most of the mainstream streaming sites let stuff drop off the end very quickly. You are not going to easily find a collection of 1970s noir film, nor Italian zombie flicks, nor French New Wave. There are some services that do cater to that, but... that becomes expensive. So, even if I wasn't going to always gravitate towards the easy finds and easy watches of my usual genre viewing habits, I might be challenged.

One of the Should Watch categories I have never really subscribed to is Oscar Nominations. Every year, friends who Watch Movies ask me how many Oscar flicks I watched. Usually, and even when I was That Guy, the answer was "not many", and now often, not a one. Oscar Worthy is not immediately diminishing to what I want to watch, but often it pigeon holes itself. There are historical noteworthy dramas, or torturous dramas, or painful performances, or uplifting tales of overcoming great odds. I won't deny that a heavy dose of talent is required to be included, but its not always my pint of craft beer (I don't drink tea). But some, some catch my attention.

The perpetuated myth that there is No Racism (in North America) Anymore boggles my mind. Right now, today, I could easily find a story in the news, and not just in the always news worthy, rage inducing US of A, where someone behaved mind-numbing-ly horribly to another person because of their origins or skin colour. I mean... <waves in the direction of Twitter> !!! And even considering how bad it persists, not so long ago, it was So Much Worse.

That there had to be a published book for black people, that identified safe & welcoming places in the American South, while traveling, and probably also highlighted the areas to stay away from (e.g. Sundown Towns) makes my white mind think it is just another myth being generated by the Internet. I am very well aware of my privilege. I might have my own issues traveling but I would never suffer violence so easily because I am white, on the vast scale of Traveling While Black. But despite the title of the movie, the book plays very little of a part in this movie.

Dr. Donald Shirley (Mahershala Ali, Luke Cage) needs a capable driver on a tour of the American Deep South. Shirley is a composer and player of classical & jazz music. This was modern composition, not quite popular jazz nor straight up renditions of know classicists like Mozart or Tchaikovsky. By "capable" I mean, someone who can handle himself in a tough situation, especially considering he would be driving a black man through areas not covered by the green book. He ends up with Tony "Lip" Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen, The Road), from Brooklyn, a nightclub bouncer currently looking for work.

At first there is some tension. Shirley is an educated, pompous rich guy who literally interviews Tony from a throne. Meanwhile Tony is a typical lower middle class Italian guy with violent tendencies and not a lot of self-awareness.  More precisely, he has a LOT of situational awareness but accepts who and what he is without shame; so, maybe the perfect amount of self-awareness? Either way,  they don't mesh. But as the road runs out under the wheels of the Cadillac Tony drives, they get to know each other, and eventually respect.

Given this is an Oscar movie, it touches on all the right notes. Tony is being exposed to a level of racism he probably just passed off as acceptable for most of his life. But once he attaches a personal element to it, it incenses him. And Shirley learns to be a bit more comfortable with who he is, once he acknowledges things outside his European educated background & social circle. 

The thing I do always love about Oscar movies is that the actors inhabit their characters. This is Viggo with a few more pounds on, obviously not Italian, but... eventually the Viggo I knew slipped away and only Tony remained. Ali has always been precise in his depictions but there is a wee bit more nuance and vulnerability to this character. And the balance between drama, and funny and pathos is always there. 

I do have a desire to watch more of these "acclaimed" movies, to watch with a different eye, to write  about with a different hand, but its been over a decade of "tenaciously amateur" so will anything change?

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