Green Book is about the unlikely friendship between Tony Lip and Dr. Don Shirley in 1962 New York. Tony Lip works security in the Copacabana Night Club. During it's renovation he has to find some temporary work. He gets a call that Dr. Don Shirley is looking for a driver for two months. When he goes for the interview he find out that Dr. Shirley is a famous black musician that is going to be doing a tour in the south. The deep south. He needs someone to drive him to the shows, and also to protect him as well.
Over the years I have watched many movies that are during this time period in America. Segregation is rampant in the south, laws continue to separate those who are white and those who are not. However, most of the movies during this time are about people who made the biggest strides to change the laws, like Dr. Martin Luther King, or schools that had to desegregate like in the movie Remember the Titans. Manly they are about people who worked they way up to be in the history books and be remembered forever. This really is not the typical story we get from this time period in American History.
Dr. Don Shirley is not the typical story of a black man trying to change the world in the 60s. He is a man who has already mad a name for himself, all across America, for the way he can play music. He is already established, has fame, money, and knows what he likes and what he doesn't. He is someone who is "elite" meaning that he is someone who already has more privileges than most of us, no matter what color you are. That is why I have enjoyed this movie so much.
I think when we got back and look at our history we think of the people of the past like we are now. We but ourselves into their shoes as much as week can. In school when we learn about segregation it's taught about through the eyes of an everyday American. You don't think about the people who have money or fame. You don't think of the people who have names for themselves. We don't even talk about those much other than when the laws changed and who were the biggest players to get the laws to change. We think about being the the sit ins, the protests, the marches. We forget about the "elites" anyone and everyone who has some sort of privilege in means of money, or fame. We forget about the people like Dr. Don Shirley.
Again, Dr. Shirley was a very well known man across America. He lived in an apartment above Carnegie Hall, he was famous and never wanted for nothing. We, in our modern heads, who didn't live through that kind of separation of people, don't really think about how he was treated when he went places. I think we just assume, well I did, that he would get a "pass" because he was famous. However, seeing this movie really opened my eyes to that not being the case at all.
This is a man who volunteered to go to the most segregated parts of our country to perform to the people who did pay him to go. He was invited to some of the most beautifully built homes in the south and was still expected to us and outhouse instead of the indoor bathroom. He would be invited to stay in beautiful theaters to play but not allowed to eat in their restaurants. He was applauded for being on stage and performing music like no one else could but off the stage he was still seen as less than a human being. Dr. Shirley has a special gift that people of today would love to have, and would probably get paid great money to perform, but was not treated with the same dignity off the stage as he was on.
I am not going to forget about Mr. Tony Lip. If you just watch the preview of this film and not the whole film you miss a very important detail about Tony. He is Italian. Now, if you go back to your history books you will remember that, even though their cultures are predominately white, Italians and Irish peoples where persecuted in this country too. So, even though we see that he has people being prejudiced against him he is still prejudiced against Dr. Shirley. He originally declines to take the job because he doesn't like the idea of being a drive for a black man. He tells Dr. Shirley that he has to pay him more and then he will go. After thinking about it Dr. Shirley agrees to his demands and Tony becomes his driver. After spending weeks with him out on the road he starts to see what makes Dr. Shirley so special and get to learn about his life. He finds a friendship he didn't expect to get. Not only that but it changed his perspective about how equal people really are.
What this movie was not quite what I was expecting it ended up being a great movie about friendship, self worth, love and sacrifice.
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