Green Book
Green Book (2018) is a biographical film directed by Peter Farrelly about Tony “Lip” Vallelonga, a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, who is hired by Dr. Don Shirley, a world-class Black pianist, to drive him on a concert tour that includes the Deep South. 1
The film was enjoyable enough, especially during the moments where I felt like the adversarial people in the story got what they deserved. However, I couldn’t help but feel like the story was a little too smooth and easygoing because most interpersonal conflicts between characters were low-stakes and the change in Tony seems effortless as it seems to just happen from exposure to the various situations. 1
The depiction of some characters were not as accurate as I would have liked:
- Shirley’s descendants did not approve of the film, saying that the movie’s portrayal of Shirley’s character was “a symphony of lies” and that Shirley specifically rejected efforts by Tony Lip’s son to make a movie about their friendship. 1
- Jüri Täht, who was depicted as Oleg in the film, was dismayed by the fact that Oleg was Russian in the film because he was an Estonian whose family had to flee the USSR. However, I couldn’t find a good source for this outside of Wikipedia due to the Wikipedia citation being a book I couldn’t get access to online. 1