Turns Ignorance into Awareness!

Rating: 9/10 (1 January 2019)

This film blew me completely away, this doesn't happen often but this film was a true joy to watch from start to finish. To be honest I had not heard of this film, I hadn't even seen a trailer for it before I saw it, so went in completely unaware of the story. Wow wow wow almost a perfect film, its just spectacular.
Firstly lets start with the story as the first positive, there are many positives in this film. The story is of Mahershala Ali's character "Don Shirley", who is a pianist, going on a road trip through America with Viggo Mortensen's character of "Tony Lip" as his driver. So the premise itself is pretty straight forward, however this film is set in 1960's America and the two of them are travelling towards the deep south. This brings a number of huge challenges or problems that could arise due to the obvious fact that one man is black and the other is white.
Now this film could definitely have been an extremely dark and depressing film showing the racism in America at that time all throughout its run time. In a way it does that but its achieved in the simplest of ways either through a simple conversation or action. The hints can be subtle at times and front-centre at other times. The reason that dark subject matter works in this film is because it is balanced with some great humour that runs throughout the film. Neither one aspect of the film overshadows the other, the film is not to dark nor its it too lighthearted about sed subject matter. Just perfect screenplay for this film.
There some tense scenes in the film whether that be not allowing "Don Shirley" to use the inside toilet but an outside one or when they try to buy a suit , he is not allowed. There just a couple of examples but the film definitely can take a serious stance when it needs to and it handles extremely well.
I don't think I've laughed more in a film in 2018 because the humour is clever and some small little jokes can go on for long time. Majority of it is between the two main characters and predominately "Tony Lips" ignorance to black people and to America at that time. One line he says is that he wouldn't be offended if someone said all Italian's are the same.......or something on those lines. Due to that his ignorance means he doesn't see why claiming all black people are the same is any different. However he does get offended when he is compared to some of the "Southern white men" in the film. Some of the best humour has to be when it either involves "Tony Lip" writing letters to his wife, who knows the truth about them, or the gun and rock he either does or doesn't have on him. Just brilliant dialogue for this actors to read.
Best part about the story and film for me is the fact that both men learn from one another and try to be better people. Most of it is Ali's character trying to help Mortensen's character understand the ignorance of his ways. It is achieved in a brilliant way, through friendship.
Now onto the last two positives, they are Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. Both of those men bring there A-game to this film. I'd have to say that I think Viggo is slightly better that Ali but thats probably due to the fact that his character has more to do and his a likeable idiot. Therefore most of the humour is due to Mortensen's character but that doesn't take away from ALi' performance in anyway, both of them elevate each other. Mortensen , Best Acting Oscar????
Overall this film is 90% out of 100 or 9 out of 10, just go and see this film trust me you will not be disappointed, this is such a joyful film to watch in a strange way because of its subject matter. However that is exactly what the film does, it turns darkness into joy and ignorance into awareness.
PS: The fact this was based on real events is all the better, the film has really good ending!