Green Book Review: Making Friends From Different Worlds
And why we should do the same in real life
Rating: 4 out of 5
The Award-Winning But Not-So-Boring Film
If you are worried this movie might be boring because it has won three Golden Globe Awards, I can tell you that you couldn’t be more wrong in this case.
Because this film is funny and warm. And what is special about this movie is, it talks about serious issues — like races, stereotyping, happiness — in a way you wouldn’t feel disturbing or depressing when watching the movie.
The film is based on a true story about two strangers, from totally different worlds, meet for a road trip and end up becoming very good friends.
The character Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) is an upper-class African-American classical pianist looking for a driver on his road tour. And the other character Tony Lip (played by Viggo Mortensen) is a working-class Italian-American bouncer taking up the driver job.
The Unlikely But Natural Friendship
Lip working as a bouncer in bars needs to make ends meet for his family — a wife and two kids — on a weekly basis. Fortunately, he can always manage to get just enough money home without being kicked out by his landlord.
On the other hand, Shirley is an established pianist, who is making a good living, with his home decorated like a tribal chief in Africa. But he is lonely and he drinks heavily every night. Also, he feels lost in terms of which racial group he should belong to.
The movie goes through a series of incidents during their road tour. We can see how Lip and Shirley go from disliking to appreciating each other, and then from causing trouble to offering help to one another.
The beauty of this film is all of these changes happen naturally without much drama. It is like watching two men building their friendship — which usually takes years in today’s standard — condensed into an eight weeks road tour, which in turn condensed into the 130-minutes movie that we are seeing.
Another unique aspect of this film is, unlike others in the same category, it is not just about how the upper-class character inspired by the working-class one. In this movie, the two characters — regardless of their social classes — are equals to one another.
They each have their own way of solving problems, and they inspired one another by helping out on the problems of the other person.
And that’s what friends are for — helping and more importantly, accepting help from each other — no matter what year or race we are talking about.
Rolling The Credits
Green Book is such a beautiful film not for its costumes or scenery, but for the way it shows the friendship between two persons.
Nowadays, we are looking at our phones all the time — for instance, during lunches with colleagues or dinners with distant family members. Perhaps we should put down our phones next time and try to chat with them or — at the very least — listen to whatever they are talking about.
We might find out solutions to our own problems from their conversations. If that doesn’t happen, just getting a fascinating story from their worlds would make the whole meal much more enjoyable.
Not to mention we might make another good friend of ours after the meal is over, who knows.
