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movie review - Green Book

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2020.04.05

This is a movie about a tough who works as a door man in the early 1960s. His club closes for renovations, and he needs income as things were already pretty tight. The mob is interested, but he doesn't want to work for them doing "things" as they describe it.

Across town there's a concert pianist who needs a driver who can handle himself, because the pianist is touring the Southern US states and is Black (and, it turns, gay). The pianist's people have been asking around, and the tough's name comes up from "more than one source".

The tough - played by an unrecognizable Viggo Mortenson - doesn't like the pianist, of course. His narrow Italian-American working-class world-view has no place for the pianist. But he takes the job, driving and keeping an eye on things. The rest of the movie plays out as a study of the two strong-willed and flawed characters.

This movie is substantially better than I expected, staying away from any kind of cliched buddy-movie BS and feeling quite authentic for the time period. The title comes from a book that lists the places where Black guests are welcome for the night, a sign of the absurdities of applied racism in the US - and very timely given everything that's happened in the US recently. The restrictions are one thing but the driver is called upon to stand up for the pianist in a number of circumstances that show just how bad things are and just how close the violence is, beneath the surface.

Strongly recommended. This is probably the best film I'll see all year.

rand()m quote

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

—Colin Powell