Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen give fantastic performances in Peter Farrelly’s touching buddy movie
Think about an odd acting couple you might see on the big screen: many names will probably come to your mind except for a duo like Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen. Believe it or not, the two got the leading roles in Peter Farrelly’s new film, Green Book, a funny and touching buddy movie based on the true story of musician Don Shirley and his driver and friend Tony Vallelonga.
Green Book had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award and debuted today at Rome Film Festival.
The title of the film refers to The Negro Motorist Green Book, by Victor Hugo Green, published between 1936 and 1966: the book provided a list of places where black travelers could receive services during the days of Jim Crow laws.
Presenting the film at the festival, Mortensen explained: «Green Book doesn’t tell you what to think, what to hear and what to see. This film is an invitation to take a road trip, an invitation to laugh, to cry and maybe to think about the limits of first impressions. It’s not a forced lesson: it’s a beautiful story of the past that we share, a story that can help us understand the present.»
Green Book is set in the 60s: Tony “Lip” Vallelonga is an italian-american bouncer who works at Copacabana Club in New York. As the club must close for renovations, he suddenly finds himself without a job. With a wife and two kids to support, Tony accepts food eating challenges and he gives his watch as collateral in order to pay the rent of his house.
Suddenly he makes it to the shortlist of candidates for an interview with a mysterious man who lives on the top of the Carnagie Hall. Tony soon realizes that the man is Donald “Don” Shirley, a famous jamaican musician who’s looking for a driver/security to take him on a long tour through the Deep South. Tony wouldn’t be Don’s first pick: the pianist notices that the man is rude and that he has complicated views about people of colour. But Tony needs a job and Don needs a driver, so they finally “seal the deal”.
The two men clearly belong to different worlds but, after a rocky start, the road trip evolves into the journey of a lifetime: gig after gig, Tony and Donald put their differences aside and they start to appreciate each other. As Don faces racist attacks, Tony stands for him in public; when the driver writes ungrammatical love letters to his wife, the musician offers him his eloquence.
The real Shirley and Vallelonga died in 2013, but the american director collaborated with Tony Vallelonga’s sons to write the screenplay. Ali and Mortensen wonderfully portray their characters giving Farrelly’s film a tasty and unexpected flavor: they play with stereotypical elements so, as Ali makes fun of educated musicians’ snobbery, Mortensen plays with italian-americans’ brutal honesty.
Sometimes, making a great film, means to keep it simple and that’s exactly what Farrelly did: the american director supported the chemistry between his actors and followed the characters on their trip. What we get in return is a two men show made of music, jokes and touching moments.
Every now and then, we forget that we’re watching fiction and remember that Green Book is, most of all, the story of a wonderful friendship, maybe one of the best we’ve ever seen.
