You’ll recall that my adorable wife gave me the greatest Christmas gift of all, and last night, we saw Green Book in #12DatesOfChristmas #1.
Before I get to my review (tl;dr: we both loved it, in particular, the musicianship was outstanding) let me complain for a moment or two.
irrelevant complaining
We took a Lyft to the theatre (so that I can safely look at my phone in the car). On the way there I used the Cineplex app to buy tickets. Normally I like what Cineplex calls the “AVX” experience where you get a reserved seat and need not worry about getting there at the last minute … but this was a normal you-take-your-chances-where-you-sit film, and the Cineplex app was only letting me enter “1” in the ticket quantity field. The stupid “+” button to increment the number of tickets was disabled. Obviously this means there is something broken with the UI in the app. We’ll fix it when we get to the theatre and buy a ticket by standing in line like cavemen.
Well guess what, when the app only lets you buy 1 ticket, it actually means “you are buying the very last ticket, the movie is almost sold out.” Live and learn. We couldn’t get a 2nd ticket, so we decided to have dinner in one of the many fine restaurants in what is actually called the “Oakville Entertainment Centrum” and come back for the 9:30 show.
Conveniently the fine restaurant we selected took their time with abysmally slow service which ate up most of the 3 hour wait for the next show.
movie review
Anyway.
We loved the movie. Movie reviewers love it too, and our local reviewer strongly encouraged us to see it (thanks, Tyler, you were right.)
There are plenty of reasons to love Green Book, but one actually struck me: The actors genuinely seem to be playing their instruments! Mahershala Ali is VERY believable as a concert pianist, and the other actors playing cello and bass seem to be doing it properly too. Even the big band you see at the Copacabana in an early scene seems to be playing the notes correctly. (Am I the only person who studies trombone positions and trumpet fingerings on the screen to decide if they actually represent the correct note? I hope not.)
If you play any instrument, you cringe when you see actors trying to do it, usually badly. Their hand and arm movements are out of sync, the camera shoots from the other side of the piano so you can’t actually see the keyboard, the trombone slide is moving when the note is not changing, the trumpet fingering is all wrong. Actors-as-conductors are usually the worst, waving their arms as if they were shooing away a fly.
But in The Green Book, they really took the effort to make it all believable.
I came across this article on The Secret to Mahershala Ali’s Piano Playing. The film’s music director Kris Bowers is the one actually performing, but he worked with Ali to get the posture and gestures right, and the effect really shows. I wish more productions took the trouble to get this right. (One of the commenters on that article says that Ali’s head was superimposed on Bowers’s body in many shots. It’s seamless.)
It reminds me of one of my all time favourite films, Brassed Off, starring the late Pete Postlethwaite as the leader of the Grimley Colliery Brass Band in a coal mining town in the U.K. and the adversity they face when the mine shuts down. I totally bought that he was a band conductor. I didn’t for a moment think he was an actor faking it – and I felt the same way in The Green Book. Bravo.
More like this please. Find actors who can do it properly, or train the ones that can’t, or – here’s an idea – cast actual musicians once in a while.
postscript
I was intrigued by this story. If you’ve seen the movie, you might also like to read up on the real Don Shirley and Tony .Vallelonga
legal note
Counsel has raised an objection to calling this #12DatesOfChristmas #1 since we had earlier seen Mary Poppins Returns, and that this should more properly be at most Date 1(b). I will respond that the viewing of Mary Poppins Returns was #12DatesOfChristmas #0, actually a Pre-Tournament Exhibition Date, in the same way that Canada plays Finland before the World Junior Hockey Championship actually began. And also in Computer Science we often begin counting at zero anyway.