November 7, 2009
"They used to get around, walkin' around, lookin' at stuff. They used to try to find clues to all the mysteries and mistakes God had made."...( read more)2.photobucket.com/albums/w25/EarthlyAlien/GW-still.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket">
Kids teetering on teenagehood and adulthood, an industrialized landscape veering into decay and reclamation by the wild countryside from which it arose, a lyrical Southern tone poem verging on Faulkneresque drama - all these are the raw elements used by George Washington in its vivid depiction of a group of kids during a long-gone summer. These predominantly African-American kids between the ages of 8 and 14 are something special, not so much because of who they are and what they do - very little actually happens - but because of how David Gordon Green (making his feature film debut, at age 25) opens up these lives to us by slowing down our dramatic expectations and drawing us into the rhythms of their language and activities.
The film opens with two said kids talking. Nasia (Candace Evanofski) is breaking up with Buddy (Curtis Cotton III), who is still crazy about her. "Did you think we were going to be together forever?" she asks him. When he asks for a last kiss, she asks, after a pause, "Tell me that you love me. Do you love me?" And Buddy remains silent and looks away. They speak in slow, flat tones, but with sincerity, and there's an undertone of sadness and loss. The scene feels authentic; it may have been improvised, as some parts of George Washington surely were. There are pauses in the conversation as these kids grope to express feelings that they barely understand, no less have the words to articulate.
The next we see of her, Nasia has found herself a new boyfriend, George (Donald Holden), who wears a football helmet to protect his head which is vulnerable due to a soft cranium. George, being a boy, has big dreams - to live forever, to be president of the United States - while Nasia, a girl, is more focused on the practical and the here-and-now: she wants to see George waving a flag in the Fourth of July parade. While these poor kids seem to function in a comfortably racially-mixed milieu, that Fourth of July parade is all white and middle-class and George does not get to march. Ironically, with his physical vulnerability, he's not the one to suffer the serious blow to the head. But he does become a hero, diving into a swimming pool to rescue another kid who is drowning. After that he adapts a super-hero costume - tights and an improvised cape. "If no one would look after him," observes Nasia, "at least they would look at him."
Candace Evanofski's molasses-toned voice-over narration reminds us of the mournfully matter-of-fact cadences of Linda Manz's voice-over in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, a film with which George Washington is often compared. The only things the two films share, however, is a similar tone, a pensive yet peaceful reflection on a moment in time that has passed, and a look that finds the beauty and grace in the plainness of forgotten towns and its many landscapes.
Filmed in North Carolina, George Washington's lovely camerawork by Tim Orr locates the cohabiting nuances of the area's simultaneous rural and urban decay. It's a region that Americans may know - from having visited it or simply learned about it in their history books - but that the rest of the world rarely sees on film, and a region whose children are even less likely to be seen and heard. George Washington delights in their voices, slowing things down to listen to what they - and even the adults - have to say. The haunting drone of the music by Michael Linnen and David Wingo handsomely complements the film's progression and flow. The pace, and what characters say, and how they pass the time, and their geographic influences...
These sorts of things, rather than plot, form the real crux of George Washington. And what these kids have to say is eye-opening, especially for those accustomed to Hollywood's formulaic kid stereotypes. Not exactly miniature adults, this largely pre-teen group nevertheless express themselves with confidence, sensitivity, and honesty. Sometimes, like the scene in which Nasia and her girlfriends of various ages are combing each other's hair and talking about boys, the maturity of their judgements impresses the viewer. Then, at other times, the vastness of what they don't yet know or understand also leaves its mark.
The film is filled with hypnotic, dreamlike images. It's lovely. A stunningly assured directorial debut, it's absolutely lyrical in beauty, which makes the fact that it was directed by a first timer all the more impressive. Perhaps it is precisely because this is the director's first feature that he is able to create such a wonderful sense of innocence. Green gets remarkable performances out of a cast that is almost entirely comprised of amateurs. He's not afraid to make squalor look beautiful, and one gets the impression that by making the film look as good as he does, Green wants us to not judge the film based on its surroundings, but to rather look at the universal applications of its themes. That George Washington manages to say so much, and still remain filled with subtlety and warmth makes it feel like an aberration among the American films that are shoved down the world's throaths everyday.
"Sometimes I smile and laugh when I think of all the great things you're gonna do. I hope you live forever."
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