Green Book (2018)

Viggo Mortensen plays Tony Lip who gets a job driving around a concert pianist named Dr. Don Shirley, played by Mahershala Ali around the Deep South. Despite Shirley’s money and prestige audience (or more likely because of it) there were only certain places in the Deep South were a man of color can eat and sleep and apparently they had a “tour guide” for this called the Green book (Hence the name of the movie). You learn something new everyday.

For the most part this movie was not about the greenbook but the friendship that these two men developed while traveling through the Deep South. Obviously, the subject comes up as Tony Lip learns first hand what black men had to go through and on the other side Tony Lip became the friend  Dr. Shirley really needed, in a strange reversal of Driving Miss Daisy.

Though I can’t help but to be moved by how good of a job this movie did showing how common and acceptable racism…”once” was, and the loneliness Dr. Shirley felt in his battle to stop it (Being that his music wasn’t  exactly being played by black folk of the period),  it’s not that compelling of a story but Mortensen and Ali show why they are such good actors and the chemistry between both actors is working well.

So well it becomes beautiful and you can’t help but to be touched.