Green Book stars Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen in what seemed to me as a mash-up of Driving Miss Daisy, My Fair Lady and Cyrano de Bergerac. The title refers to the guide book published to help black travelers find accommodations while travelling through the segregated south of the 1960s US.
Ali plays Dr Don Shirley, a talented black pianist heading off with his backing musicians for a tour of the deep south. Mortensen plays Tony Vallelonga (aka Tony Lip), a nightclub bouncer whom Shirley hires to smooth out the issues that he knows will come with such a trip in 1962. The two are as unalike as possible: Shirley is black, literate, refined and cultured, while Tony is a rough and tumble Italian labourer from the Bronx. As they travel together and get to know each other, they begin to develop respect for each other, and a friendship develops as they help each other in unanticipated ways.
The injustices inflicted on the black population in America's deep south are familiar, but this film shows them in a different light. Shirley was from a wealthy family of immigrants from Jamaica, and feels apart from the poor black population of the South. He is accepted by the white elite in each town as an entertainer for their private soireés, but still subject to their humiliating segregation laws.
You may figure out early that this will be a buddy travel film, and it is, but in ways that are deeply touching. This is one of the films I was most looking forward to at this year's festival, and it did not disappoint.
After the film there was an excellent Q&A with Viggo Mortensen and Nick Mortensen, the real-life son of the character he portrayed, who had written and produced the film.
TIFF Co-Head Cameron Bailey hosting the post-screening Q&A
with Nick Vallelonga and Viggo Mortensen
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