Green Book

An entertaining, funny and surprisingly emotional buddy drama-comedy that was clearly designed and engineered to assuage the White Man Guilt. This was a film that emphasised the journey of the White Man. Nonetheless, even with taking the WMG out of the equation, narratively the thematic weightage was biased towards one party more than the other. And this is why Viggo Mortensen is up for Best Actor and Mahershala Ali for Best Supporting Actor, which if nothing else goes wrong should remain true with the Oscar nominations. Although their chances of winning would not be high. Mortensen was great here and, like Christian Bale in “Vice”, gained the pounds for a physical transformation, but other than physical, the change was also in character. This was not the same person in “Captain Fantastic” or “A History of Violence” and it was fascinating to watch as his character grow and evolved over the film. On the other hand, Ali was more restrained but played the complexity of his character closer to the heart with more emphasis on body language and tonal affectation to express himself. Peter Farrelly’s direction helped to shape the story - co-written by the Mortensen’s character real life son - and paced it accordingly. The use of comedy was brilliant, scattered accordingly to lighten the mood but also to underpin themes and establish character development. Accordingly, the laughs were well earned and genuinely funny. Therefore, it was no surprise that it beat out “A Star is Born” for the People’s Choice Award at Toronto. But then so did last year’s fantastic “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and it still lost to “The Shape of Water” eventually. Regardless of its faults, “Green Book” was a still a well directed, well acted and genuinely feel good movie.