Director Peter Farrelly of the movie Green Bookwon the Award for Best Picture at the 91st Oscars against Black Panther and Blackkklansman.
Peter Farrelly’s 2019 movie Green Book is a biopic centered around the world-renown African-American pianist Dr. Donald Shirley (Mahershala Ali), who hires Italian-American, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) as his chauffeur. The film follows them as they travel across the profoundly discriminatory south during Shirley’s 1962 music tour.
While the movie may appear to be the true story of an interracial friendship that conquers the barriers of racism, a closer look from film critics and the general public the movie soon generated greater scrutiny and criticism. The film failed to pull off an accurate depiction of the black experience in the 1960s and if viewers are looking for an accurate story of the life of Dr. Shirley Green Book is not the movie to watch.
As a biopic, the film is supposed to highlight Dr. Shirley’s personal life and the experiences he has in the music industry as an African-American man. However, the film rarely depicts those moments. Instead, he is left as an enigma as the film glosses over his relationship with his family.
Tony and his family, on the other hand, are featured intimately throughout the film. If I didn’t know any better, I would have assumed the movie was about Tony instead. The film takes its time with Tony as he goes through some major “transformative” moments as a character. This leaves Dr. Shirley, the “main character,” looking more like an accessory.
With the input coming from film critics, Dr. Shirley’s immediate family did several interviews announcing that they believed Green Book had completely missed the mark of who Dr. Shirley was as a person. In a letter sent to “Black Enterprise” by Dr. Shirley’s brother Maurice he writes, “This movie, “The Green Book” is NOT about MY brother, but about money, white privilege, assumption, and Tony Lip!”
Because Shirley is presented as a secondary character, this also puts the black narrative on the back burner as well. In addition to the film's portrayal of not having a relationship with his brother, it seems as though Shirley is estranged from his identity too.
The movie is filled with stereotypes, some so blatantly obvious you would think Farrelly would at least attempt to camouflage them. In the film, Shirley and Lip get off to a rocky start where Lip makes the claim that he is “more black” than Shirley because he listens to soul music, knows how African Americans “talk”, and lives amongst them. As the movie unfolds, they become comfortable around each other. So comfortable that the film goes as far as to feature a clip where Tony teaches Shirley how to eat fried chicken. Wow, such a progressive friendship.
Beyond the biographical and character inaccuracies, the film’s depiction of race is by far the biggest one. In a society where racial tensions are high, accurate storytelling and representation are needed more than ever. It is impossible to write the story of an African-American man in the 1960s without having a single African-American man as a screenplay writer.
The Green Book was a travel guide created during the era of Jim Crow law that was designed to help African Americans safely navigate their way through the Jim Crow south. This guide was crucial for African Americans, knowing the appropriate places to travel to could be the difference between life and death.
For a movie named after a tool that was essential to the survival for African Americans, that historical weight it not felt. To be up against movies like Black Panther that features an all-Black cast, providing so much representation, and Blackkklansmana movie in which Spike Lee showed us that the issues of the past are not as well behind us as we think, Green Book is utterly disdainful.
“Tell exactly the truth.” - Dr. Shirley
Written by Lina Tate | Staff Writer
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