Green Book

It's fun when you have a job and you get to work with people from around the world.

You get all these fascinating insights into remarkably diverse cultures many of which are quite similar to your own if you make respectful comparisons.

Try new things.

You grow up eating specific foods for instance, and as you age, because you continue to eat these specific foods, it seems like eating them is natural, inasmuch as habits come to culturally qualify the term.

But when you work with people from different countries and begin to realize that they feel the same way about the food they grew up eating, the term natural becomes less organic, or is at least internationally diversified.

If you begin to try all the delicious foods they grew up eating and learn to appreciate the differences, while still enjoying your favourite local dishes, your options succulently expand tenfold, and your palette becomes much more global.

And you can ask questions like, "how do I turn this into a sandwich?", or, "can you melt cheese on this?", etc.

Plus, you're always eating.

I started cooking rice all the time.

Mixing in green lentils and potato.

In Peter Farrelly's Green Book, a gifted African American musician (Mahershala Ali as Dr. Don Shirley) takes his melodies on the road to the Southern U.S., hoping to build bridges of trust.

He hires a feisty bouncer from the Bronx to drive him (Viggo Mortensen as Tony Lip), and the two productively clash along the way.

As refined ethical viewpoints find themselves immersed in worlds where they don't apply, a more practical approach is begrudgingly sought, which, unfortunately, while necessary at points, does less to change hearts and minds.

And also causes serious problems.

The film cleverly embraces this pact and gradually synthesizes gentle and rough pretensions, Tony learning to react less instinctually, Dr. Shirley learning to take more precautions.

They slowly become friends as the film unreels and learn to appreciate each other precisely because of their differences.

Experience having taught them respect.

Green Book also examines the old "chummy" racial slurs that are often built into social interactions.

Tony makes the point that people "don't worry about" these slurs when they hear them but doesn't realize he's speaking from a position of privilege.

When the slurs are directed at him in the deep South he does worry about it and soon winds up in jail.

Different cultures often have different traditions which when appreciated add so much peaceful character to a neighbourhood/city/nation/world.

The casual slurs can make hard times worse.

And may not be as harmless to the people who let things slide.

As people in positions of privilege think.