Green Book

Green Book is based on the real life friendship between a nightclub bouncer from New York, Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), and an African-American pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali).

Vallelonga also know as Tony Lip, for his bullshitting expertise, is hired as Shirley’s driver and minder as he goes on tour through the still segregated deep south of America in the early 1960s.

They are armed with the Green Book, a guide to hotels and restaurants hospitable to black people, which means that the employee often gets better accommodation than his boss. The further south they go, the more prejudice they encounter and the more Shirley is viewed as a novelty act rather than the world class musician that he is. Shirley knows all this but he is doing this the tour out of defiance because he wants to confront the racism head on even if he isn’t allowed to use their bathroom.

Vallelonga not only has to drive Shirley, ensure that he always gets to play on his cherished Steinway piano, but he also has to protect him from himself. He is prone to act in a very erratic fashion from time to time. Vallelonga has to deal with some thugs in a bar for him and when his sexual escapades with another man land him in jail, he is the one who manages to free him.

 

As the two start to bond, you just know that the pair’s better qualities will rub off on each other and that is how it pans out. The more articulate Shirley even dictates letters for Vallelonga to send back to his wife (Linda Cardellini).

Sadly a lot of the film doesn’t ring true. At the start we see Vallelonga put two glasses in the bin because his wife has let two black workmen drink from them but this level of fanatical racism seems to immediately disappears the moment he meets Shirley. He also appears to be an expert in black culture who introduces his employer to the joys of Aretha Franklin and James Brown. Amazingly Shirley is unaware of them. Oh, and of fried chicken.

It's amiable but lightweight entertainment despite it's heavyweight subject. Generally it is a film more focussed on friendship than civil rights but for saying that we weren't sure if we wanted to see this or not it was a very pleasant surprise. Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen are both excellent and make a very engaging odd couple.

The Two Faces Of January

The Two Faces of January, which is based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith.

Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst) are touring the sights of Athens when we first meet them. They appear to be a normal-ish couple, affluent and with a largish age gap between them but seemingly happy together.

They meet an American tour guide called Rydal (Oscar Isaac), who makes most of his money scamming tourists. Rydal sticks with them, thinking he’s found another rich and easy target. Along with the fact he clearly likes the look of Colette and hopes there might be some fringe benefits in that direction as well.

Rydal quickly finds out that he just a small time crook compared to Chester. Who is mixed up in something far dodgier and more lucrative. When someone comes calling to get their money back, they wind up dead and the MacFarlands suddenly end up trying to flee the country.

Now lured by prospect of even more money and of Colette of course, Rydal decides to help them. He knows someone who can get them new passports and get them out of Greece. 

It’s a promising setup with three promising characters. Rydal doesn’t trust Chester and Chester certainly doesn’t trust Rydal. We get treachery upon treachery and double-double-dealing but the interplay between them just doesn’t quite stack up. The relationship between Colette and Rydal is undeveloped and in the end the plot resolution is far from convincing. Still the acting is good and the film moderately engaging. Not bad.

A Dangerous Method

We had a quite a few options for films this weekend, so I was going to pick one tonight and then my partner could pick one for tomorrow. To say I was disappointed with my choice would be a bit of an exaggeration. Yes it had Keira Knightly in it, which is always a flashing amber warning light but it was also directed by David Cronenberg, starred Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender as well as being about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. So it sounded good on paper.

Actually Keira, bless her, is far from the worst thing about this movie. In fact she has perhaps found her vocation, playing a mad person who likes a bit of a spanking. I can see it would have been the odd sort of role that awards committees love and she certainly put in the required amount of overacting to be considered, if only it had come in a decent film. Which 'A Dangerous Method' isn't.

It’s nicely shot, well made and reasonably well acted. It’s just a shame about the screenplay. The film is about the professional relationship between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Unfortunately too much of the film was taken up by discussions between these two men. These went pretty much how you'd expect discussions between two psychologists to go and you wouldn't really have wanted to sit in on that. Would you? Somehow I expected them to have jazzed it up, showed the back story, developed the characters etc etc.

I guess the spankings were there to liven things up but it was all a bit laughable really. Although not laughable enough to count as light relief. I suppose I best explain that there’s a third party in this professional relationship called Sabine Spielrein (Ms Knightly).

An insane Spielrein is sent to Jung’s clinic in Zurich for treatment, where he uses a new form of therapy known as the ‘talking cure’. Basically Jung sits behind his patient whilst they attempt to describe their problems to him. In her case, these turn out to be sexual fantasies generated by her father's ill treatment of her as a child. My diagnosis would have been that she was insecure and in need of attention but then I’m just the viewer here and not the psychologist.

As it turns out, I could have prescribed the same treatment Jung does but doubt I’d have got away with it. He didn’t think he’d get away with it either until a meeting with the maverick psychoanalyst\patient\mad man (delete as applicable) Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel). Gross convinces Jung that there’s only one remedy for her mixed up libido and, by the way mate, monogamy is for wimps.

So Jung gives Spielrein the attention she craves and the spankings via a prescription of regular sex, taken as often as needed, with him. Code of ethics? What’s that?

It does seems to work, Spielrein recovers and turns out to not be as stupid as she looks as she enrols in medical school. Where she becomes... another psychoanalyst. FFS. Meanwhile Jung takes his successful treatment method on to another patient.

So everyone is happy. Well except Jung’s wife Emma (Sarah Gadon) and even she didn't seem too bothered. Perhaps because, on the evidence provided, it seemed pretty crap sex anyway. In a clever parallel with the film itself, there is little passion or emotion on display. So she probably thought she was better off out of it.

Amidst all this 'excitement' are the insomnia curing discussions between Jung and Freud which involves a lot of reading of letters, which is hardly compelling viewing. Eventually their relationship deteriorates over a clash of ideologies.

Reading my review back it makes the film sound far more interesting than it was. It’s a weird film but sadly not remotely weird enough to be interesting. David Cronenberg made a name for himself with films about dark, controversial topics, so this seemed a perfect fit for him but it’s as tedious as a psychoanalysis session. I guess it was probably educational but only in the way an Open University broadcast would be. You have been warned.

Eastern Promises

Tonight we see David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises which was shot exclusively in London. A pregnant 14-year old Russian girl arrives in A&E, haemorrhaging badly and with needle marks on her arms. The girl dies but the baby survives, Nurse Anna (Naomi Watts) is left holding the baby along with the girl's diary, which contains some very sensitive information, and a business card for a Russian restaurant. Anna attempts to have the diary translated in order to identify the girl's family. Watts, my second babe on a motorcycle in the space of just a few hours, and in a nice pair of boots, also goes to the restaurant but in doing so, she becomes embroiled in the dark world of the Russian Mafia, who want the diary back.



Viggo Mortensen, who plays Nikolai, the 'driver' to the mob, is outstanding. Nikolai is seemingly the cool, calculating part of the 'family' compared with the blundering son Kirill.


Cronenberg's mixes in his usual dollop of violence and treats us to two cut throats and an eye gouging, that oddly left most of the cinema in raptures of laughter. Mortensen performs the fight screen that leads to the eye gouging in a steam bath completely nude.

An excellent film with a good twist at the end.