Authentic depiction of the North/South, Black/White and educated/not educated divides of the "Land of the Free"

Rating: 9/10 (13 October 2019)

The myth that the victory of the Union in the Civil War freed the African-American is punctured in this extraordinary movie which does not duck one issue about the continued post Civil War divisions - even well into the second half of the 20th Century.
The "Green Book" is a travel guide which listed the places where negroes were permitted to overnight. Especially in the South. In 1962. A hundred plus years on from Lincoln. As in "The Heat of the Night" if you venture south of the Mason-Dixon Line you'll find a foreign country where they do things differently.
Don Shirley, the black pianist, and Tony Lip, the Italian from the Bronx who is his driver, defy the black/white stereotypes. The former is sophisticated, supremely talented, squeamish and refined. But black. The latter is rough, lives from hand to mouth, physical and limited. But white. In Birmingham Alabama Tony can eat in the restaurant and piss in the bathroom. Don has to go down the street to somewhere the black folks eat and piss in a shack in the yard.
That's the essence of the story. Prejudice. Racial divides. Discrimination. Overt and largely unchallenged racism. Even to a genius who lives in a beautiful apartment on the top floor of Carnegie Hall. The "Boy" has to telephone Attorney General Bobby Kennedy to get released from jail where an indiscretion of Tony has landed him.
The film is impeccably directed, brilliantly cast and cleverly written. It is fictionalised from the true story of Don and Tony but this is not a documentary. In 2019 in the Age of Trump it is appropriate to revisit the recent past of explicit prejudice ( and worse). America is rotten fro the bottom up - "Green Book" tells you why.