Green Book — a road movie shaped like the Good Samaritan

What the film does

Peter Farrelly’s Green Book opened in November 2018 and won the Academy Award for Best Picture in February 2019. The film follows two real historical figures: pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a Black classical and jazz musician, and his driver Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), an Italian-American working-class New Yorker, on a 1962 concert tour through the American South. The title refers to The Negro Motorist Green Book, a real travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 listing establishments that would serve African-American travellers.

The film operates in the road-movie genre: two characters from different worlds confined together over a journey, each becoming, by degrees, capable of seeing the other and being seen. The narrative does not cite scripture. Its architecture, however, has a recognisable parallel in Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).

The historical record of the Shirley-Vallelonga relationship is contested; the Shirley family has publicly disputed several elements of the film’s portrayal. This entry does not adjudicate the historical question; it documents the film as released.

The parable

The parable of the Good Samaritan is told by Jesus in response to a question. An expert in the law has asked, in Luke 10:25, what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus turns the question back: what does the law say? The lawyer cites the love-God and love-neighbour commandments. Jesus tells him he has answered correctly. The lawyer then asks, in 10:29, who is my neighbour? — a question Jesus answers with the parable.

A man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho is attacked by robbers, beaten, and left for dead. A priest passes by on the other side. A Levite passes by on the other side. Then:

“But a Samaritan on his journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” (Luke 10:33-34, BSB)

The Greek verb for had compassion is splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι). BDAG s.v. splanchnizomai: “have compassion, feel sympathy, feel pity.” The verb is built from splanchna — the inward parts, the bowels — the body location ancient writers identified with strong emotion. The word denotes a gut-level moved-ness, not a calm assessment.

Jesus closes the parable with a question:

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10:36, BSB)

The lawyer answers: the one who showed him mercy (10:37). Jesus tells him to go and do likewise.

The parable’s structure depends on the social fact, in 1st-century Judea, that Samaritans were the religious and ethnic out-group from the perspective of Jesus’s Jewish audience. Putting the Samaritan in the role of moral exemplar — over a priest and a Levite, two figures of the Jewish religious establishment — is the parable’s argument. The neighbour question is not answered by listing categories; it is answered by an example of category being crossed.

The parallel in the film

Several elements of Green Book run alongside the parable’s architecture:

• Two outsiders. Tony, an Italian-American operating in a culture that has often treated his community as suspect; Shirley, a Black classical pianist operating in a culture that segregated his audience and denied his expertise. Neither fits cleanly into the South they pass through.
• Mercy across category lines. Each character extends help to the other. Tony’s physical-world competence makes the tour possible; Shirley’s literacy and refinement reshape Tony’s letters home. The film stages this as reciprocal, not unidirectional charity.
• The helped and the helper reversed. The parable’s surprise is that the Samaritan helps the Jew. The film’s interplay is that Tony (the driver, the help) needs cultural literacy he doesn’t possess, and Shirley (the employer, the cultured man) needs physical-world help he can’t summon alone.
• A road journey as the frame. Both the parable and the film stage their action on a road; both depend on people being thrown together by circumstance.

The film does not claim to be telling the parable. It does not cite Luke 10. The parallel is structural rather than allusive. Reading the film as Samaritan-shaped is one way to see what it is doing; the film does not depend on the reading.

For the wider treatment of the golden rule (which sits in the same parable’s neighbourhood), see Do unto others — golden rule. For the related teaching on love of enemy, see Love your enemies — meaning.

To read Luke 10 in other translations:

• Luke 10:25-37 — NIV →
• Luke 10:25-37 — ESV →
• Luke 10:25-37 — NLT →