Essay On The Movie Green Book

Essay on the movie Green Book.

Green Book (2018) is an American comedy-drama directed by Peter Farelly. The story revolves around a black pianist named Don Shirley and his driver, Tony Vallelonga. The movie follows the musician’s tour they embarked on together in the Deep South in 1962. At the time, even in the midst of the civil rights period and the era of the Baby Boom, racist segregation was very much alive. The story, which is based on true events, offers an insight into the life of black people and the difficulties they encountered on a daily basis back in the 1960s. Interestingly enough, although it is not pointed out many times in the movie, there was an actual Green Book existing at the time, written by Victor Hugo Green, to provide black travellers with information about safe places to stay and to eat while they travel. The three Oscar-winner film shows us that any bias deeply rooted in our minds or forced on us by government systems, ideologies, can be fixed if we turn to each other as equal human beings.

Right at the beginning, we get to see that Tony’s character is depicted as some kind of gangster: we learn that he has Italian-American backgrounds and even the jobs he take imply that he is a rather though person. Funnily enough, being Italian-American would also suggest that he faces plenty of discrimination, but the movie does not point that out. Typical of the gangster figure, he has an ambivalent relation to law and order and he does what he can do to make a living. It is settled at the beginning, that without a doubt, Tony is a racist. His racism is shown in a scene where two black men come over to repair the sink in his apartment and he throws out the glasses they had drank from. In spite of this, he is presented in a rather sympathetic way: he cares about his family; he tries to avoid getting into contact with the mafia. When the place he works at as a bouncer closes down, he finds himself in need of a job and that is when he meets Don Shirley. Shirley is an African-American prestigious pianist looking for a driver to escort him on his tour through the Deep South. Tony is interested in the job, so he goes for the interview. At this point we see that how different the two characters lifestyle is: Tony’s home is shown on the screen in rather yellowish, fading colours suggesting that his family is not a wealthy one. When he arrives at Shirley’s place for the interview, he seems impressed about the artworks and interior of the artists’ glamorous home.