“Green Book” is standard Oscar bait.
As a true story of the unlikely friendship between a classically trained African American pianist and a tough Italian-American bouncer, the film conforms to the mass-marketed social commentary that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences often awards.
Starring Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen (“Captain Fantastic,” “Eastern Promises”) as the rough and tumble Tony Lipp and Academy Award Winner Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”) as the refined Dr. Don Shirley, the film uses the odd-couple formula to address issues of race and class.
Tony Lipp is second-generation Italian, stereotyped by the film as foul mouthed, overweight, excessively masculine and unintelligent. Shirley, a well-dressed, emotionally reserved and talented African American musician, paints a stark contrast to Mortensen’s emotionally reactive Lipp.
Shirley hires Lipp as a driver and informal bodyguard for his musical tour of the Deep South in 1962, when the Jim Crow laws that segregated citizens based on race were in full effect.
Both characters educate each other along the way. Shirley teaches Lipp proper decorum and corrects his racial prejudices, while Lipp provides Shirley the companionship he lacks in his lonely bachelor life. This results in a heartwarming tale of friendship and the importance of accepting one another despite our differences.
“Green Book” walks a fine line between exaggeration and contradiction of racial stereotypes. While Lipp is a caricature of East Coast Italians, Shirley bucks stereotypes of African Americans, such as his distaste for fried chicken before Lipp introduces him to the food.
Similar to Oscar Winner “Driving Miss Daisy,” the film raises awareness of cliched racial injustices but is never controversial enough to challenge the complexities of American racial politics. The film highlights the absurdity of prejudice through character analysis but never addresses the context of racial bigotry outside of the characters’ endeavors.
For instance, the films contain two police pullover scenes as the friends drive through the Deep South. In the first encounter, a racist cop harasses the leads with no probable cause; however, in the second interaction, an officer helps the pair with their flat tire.
The overall takeaway from these scenes is that police officers can be racist or tolerant, which is a general observation one could make about anyone. The lack of insightful commentary on the timely topic of police brutality tokenizes the scenes as though they were only included for relevance rather than intellectual discussion.
This is typical of films geared toward the Academy.
The Academy often awards nostalgia, with historical films making up the third largest genre of Best Picture winners. In 2014, seven of the nine Academy Award Best Picture nominees were biographical.
Historical characters and transformative roles are also favored in the Best Actor category, from Philip Seymour Hoffman as author Truman Capote in “Capote,” (2006) to Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour” (2017). The Academy also associates quality acting with extreme physical change, such as Matthew McConaughey’s 38-pound weight loss for “Dallas Buyers Club.”
Mortensen’s significant weight gain and thick Bronx accent, in addition to his well-developed performance, therefore put him in the lead for Best Actor at this year’s Oscars.
The film is certainly entertaining and ripe with humor and witty dialogue. Both leads give strong performances and the structure of the film is easily accessible and fast paced. Even so, a sense of déjà vu hangs over the film, as though we’ve seen it all before.
Ultimately, the recycled premise and the predictability of the narrative prevents the film from being anything but a well-intentioned, unmemorable crowd pleaser.
