As I’ve said a number of times, this website is switching over to an emphasis on food and hospitality. But I plan to still include book and movie reviews in some way, and since we haven’t made the complete switch yet I’m just writing a regular post on a movie I think you should see. Jim and I had been very intrigued with a segment on the PBS NewsHour about the film, and after our rousing success at our voice recital we found a location and time that worked for us. Jim was a little doubtful about it as there’s been some backlash, especially from the brother of one of the main characters portrayed in it, but I was all gung-ho and he was willing to be a good sport. Honestly, we just sat laughing in pure delight throughout most of the two-hour running time. The interplay between two award-winning actors, Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali, is brilliant. One of my big tests for a movie is, Would I want to see it again? The answer is YES. Maybe we’ll go see it with our son when he gets home for his college break.
About the backlash: Ali portrays the character of Don Shirley, a black concert pianist with three doctorates, as he travels through the Deep South on an eight-week concert tour during the still-segregated Sixties. Shirley died in 2013, and his brother Maurice has strongly criticized the movie, saying that it gets a number of facts wrong, including but not limited to:
1) The estrangement between Dr. Shirley and his family. (Maurice says they had a close relationship, and about this he seems to be correct.)
2) The physical violence against Shirley in several scenes (Maurice says, “My brother was NEVER beaten up as was so falsely depicted. Insulted, discriminated against, disrespected as a man and an artist, rejected…YES.”) Other negative reviews, however, say that the film doesn’t truly portray the “sense of menace” that blacks felt in the South during the Jim Crow era. So this issue seems to be a bit six-of-one half-dozen-of-the-other. Getting beaten up sounds pretty menacing to me!
3) The friendship that grows up between Shirley and his driver/bouncer Tony Villelonga, played by Viggo Mortenson (Maurice says “My brother never considered Tony to be his “friend”; he was an employee, his chauffeur [who resented wearing a uniform and cap].”) On this point Maurice is undoubtedly wrong; there’s plenty of documentation about the long-term friendship between the two men.
Oh, and even though the movie clearly states that the car Tony drives is a rental, Maurice wants to be sure that we know “My brother NEVER had a teal blue Cadillac, it was always a black limousine.” Um, okay.
This kind of nitpicking-for-the-sake-of-nitpicking kind of drives me crazy, although I can (somewhat) understand what’s going on here. The key sentence in Maurice’s criticism is, “That no one in our family was contacted until AFTER the film was made, could never be misconstrued as an oversight.” Instead, he says, the film is slanted to portray “the White Savior.” It’s understandable that Shirley’s family would find the film painful, and it’s also understandable that they’re not happy with being shut out of the profits. I don’t know who “owns” a person’s biography if it’s not a copyrighted work. The family is calling for a boycott of the film, but interestingly that would only apply to seeing it in theaters. Potential viewers are urged to wait until it comes out on cable, so that the filmmakers won’t get any profit from tickets. Doesn’t that seem a little . . . hypocritical . . . to you? If it’s so awful, and portrays Dr. Shirley so unfairly, then shouldn’t we shield ourselves from it totally?
Now for a couple of quibbles of my own:
One is just a warning: There’s a lot of bad language in the movie, so be forewarned. It’s rated PG-13, but the language would have probably earned it an R rating several years ago.
My other quibble has/had to do with a scene that I thought at the time was utterly preposterous: in one town, Tony has to get Shirley out of trouble because he’s been caught in a sexual act with another, white, man at a YMCA swimming pool. To which my reaction was, and I quote, “Wh-a-a-a-a-a-a-t?” How could this possibly happen? Surely there wasn’t racially-mixed swimming at the YMCA in the Sixties! But—you know me—I looked it up. And guess what? As a national policy the Y ended racial segregation at their facilities in 1948. Not that everyone followed that guideline, of course, but I guess I was wrong about the historicity of this event. (Don’t worry—there’s nothing graphic in the scene at all; it’s just the aftermath that’s shown after the two have been caught, in which Tony shows off why his nickname growing up was “Lip.”)
In fact, the author of the screenplay is none other than Tony’s son Nick. He told his father and Shirley that he wanted to make a movie about their relationship and interviewed both of them many times. He also had access to the letters that Tony wrote to his wife during the trip. Both men were fine with his doing this, but Shirley requested that the movie not be made until after his death, which came in 2013, the same year as Tony’s. (I know I’m being terribly inconsistent about using first names or last names, but I can’t call Tony anything but Tony.) Then it took a few years to get the film made; Nick managed somehow to get the attention of the famous director Peter Farrelly, one of the Farrelly brothers who is famous for such masterpieces as Dumb and Dumber. (Sigh.)
Well, I’ve gone kind of long here. I’m giving three links below for you to read some additional info yourself, if you’re so inclined. Then go see the movie!
First, the article in which Don Shirley’s brother Maurice is quoted extensively:
Family of black man, Don Shirley, portrayed in “The Green Book” blasts movie and its “lies”
Second, the article from TIME Magazine about Tony’s son Nick:
The True Story Behind the Movie Green Book
And finally, the PBS NewsHour segment that got my attention in the first place:
In “Green Book,” a black pianist and his white driver forge a bond amidst Jim Crow