George Washington (2000) ****½ / *****
"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."
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."
All the Real Girls (2003) **** / *****
"Do you wanna know a secret that I didn't tell anybody ever?... You know how ducks fly home in a V? It's like a v-shape when they get home? I was walking my dog and I looked up and there's this big V above me, there's all these ducks flying back to their home. And right when they flew above me, I saw 'em and, they crashed into a big house! The whole V! And then, they hit the ground, and they just kinda curled up. You ever fucking see that? Have you ever seen a mistake in nature? Have you ever seen an animal make a mistake?"
David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls (the follow-up to his astonishing 2000 debut George Washington) exhibits the same gently lackadaisical rhythm and acute perception of human joy and misery that made his debut such a success, even as it charts new territory. A dreamy tale of the wondrous elation and sometimes terrible sorrow that accompanies love, the Sundance hit - about the budding relationship between an immature womanizer and the sister of his best friend - occasionally threatens to devolve into laughable sentimentality. But Green's assured direction and two outstanding lead performances never allow this minor masterpiece to lose its course, and the results are a sumptuous romance that pulsates with the passionate ecstasy of the smitten heart.
Paul (co-writer Paul Schneider) is a standard guy working for his uncle and living with his mother in the same house he's always called home, and his abundant sexual conquests have earned him a well-deserved reputation as a licentious heartbreaker. He spends his free time with a group of lifelong buddies, drinking and looking for his next female conquest. As one former girlfriend wisely observes, Paul's the type of sleazy good-for-nothing who'll never amount to more than what he is now: a drunken, childish fool with no ambition. His mother puts it more bluntly: Paul is "not educated, honest, or strong."
But beneath that callous exterior lies a surprisingly tender soul, and Paul's world changes with the reappearance of his friend Tip's sibling, a wide-eyed ingénue named Noel (the enchanting Zooey Deschanel) who's been cooped up in an all-girl boarding school since the age of 12. Despite the objections of Tip (Shea Whigham) - who's familiar with both his sister's innocence and his pal's history of thoughtless carousing - Paul and Noel are magnetically drawn to one another, and it's not long before their casual conversations evolve into heartfelt glances, stolen kisses, and innocent nights spent under the covers. The outside world gives way as the two - concealed in a timeless small-town paradise of towering ferns, beaten down dirt roads, and quiet, still air - develop a blissful companionship, convinced that their feelings for each other are unique in the annals of history. Tim Orr's stunningly delicate, golden-hued cinematography seems to envelop the young lovers in a warm blanket of sunshine, protecting them as they float through life in a state of idyllic rapture.
As both a director and a writer, Green is uninterested in disingenuous clichés and poses, and his rejection of the genre's most hackneyed conventions comes in the form of unabashed sincerity. In his film's corny, love-struck dialogue - spoken with the gravity that comes from people wholly enraptured by their new-found emotions - Green captures the raw immediacy of Paul and Noel's exhilarating affair. The film stares directly into the face of melodramatic mawkishness, and doesn't blink; All the Real Girls transcends the corniness of its dialogue through the earnestness of Green's conviction. At one point, Noel gingerly tells Paul "I like it when you smile at me," and her words have the vulnerable honesty and the lyrical grace of a poem.
Their daydreaming, however, cannot last forever, and a disastrous decision leaves the young couple at a crossroads. Green, having immersed us in the intense atmosphere of blossoming passion, doesn't shy away from the painful consequences that caring for someone frequently entails, and he makes it clear that Paul and Noel's despair doesn't exist in a vacuum. The film reveals a town littered with the walking wounded: Paul's uncle Leland (Benjamin Mouton), still reeling from the death of his wife, has vowed to never get that close to someone again; his single mother Elvira (Patricia Clarkson), entertains hospitalized children dressed as a clown in order to alleviate her loneliness; and Tip learns a hard lesson about the ramifications of his reckless behaviour.
Green is often compared to legendary recluse Terrence Malick, and his fascination with images of nature - a river glistening in the sunlight, a crippled dog hobbling along a dusty road - imbues the seemingly ordinary with a mythical import that recalls Malick's ethereal work from the 70s. Yet unlike his kindred directorial spirit, Green is keenly attuned to his actors' strengths and weaknesses and, in Schneider and Deschanel, he has found a pair of brave performers willing to embrace material hovering on the edge of preciousness.
Schneider and Deschanel share an unaffected, easygoing chemistry that only grows more spellbinding as Paul and Noel's relationship begins to crumble under the weight of mistakes and regrets both past and present. Throughout, Green shelters their performances with steadfast grace and respect. In doing so, he has crafted a timeless portrait of two individuals' awkward, euphoric first encounter with love. And it feels as real as anything I've ever seen.
"I'm looking at you right now and I hear you talking and all the words that are coming out of your mouth are like they're coming out of a stranger. Why don't you put your fucking hair back on and come back, just come on back?"
Undertow (2004) **** / *****
"Let me see your knife. Can I carve my name in your face?"
David Gordon Green's Undertow tells a story "based on true events that was all a lie," as he describes it. While many people have been quick to draw comparison's to Charles Laughton's classic Night of the Hunter, Undertow is actually based on a 911 call from a frantic young man telling the operator some crazy stories that may or may not have been true. The film takes the stories as truth, but not without shrouding certain aspects of it in ambiguity. As with all Green's films, clear, concise narrative takes a back-seat to atmosphere and a strong emotional landscape that tells a bigger story than the one written in the plot descriptions.
Green's third film opens with a sequence that's at once visceral and baffling. Deep in the rural American South, Chris Munn (Jamie Bell), a sullen teenager with a mean twist to his mouth, throws a rock through the house of this girl, Lila (Kristen Stewart), he's been seeing. When her father emerges with a shotgun, he flees, taking refuge at a work shed where he leaps blindly onto a board with a nail jutting out of it. As he continues to run, shocked with pain, the board now affixed to the bottom of his foot, the filmmaker keeps freezing the frame - a stylistic tic that suggests there's more to what we're seeing than meets the eye. The same can be said of Undertow.
Green, it turns out, has made an art film posing as a backwoods gothic thriller. (Or is it the other way around?) The troublesome, but good-hearted Chris returns to the tumbledown home he shares with his little brother Tim (Devon Alan), a sickly dreamer who has a secret obsession with sipping paint and other stuff (hence his chronic intestinal trouble), and the pair's bedraggled father, John (Dermot Mulroney), a hog farmer and taxidermist who gruffly looks after the two boys after his wife's death.
The setting, and indeed the whole sinister hick-trash, Southern vibe of the place, suggests Faulkner by way of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the floating ominousness is soon upped with the arrival of Deel (Josh Lucas), the boys' uncle, a grinning ex-con who comes on all friendly but is clearly up to no good. In the attempt of not disclosing much, let's just say bad stuff happens and the two brothers run away from home, taking with them a dark family secret in the form of mysterious gold coins. From there, they meet many Southern locals, some hospitable, some mysterious. Uncle Deel - Green's most menacing character yet - spends days searching for them.
DGG continues to set himself apart from other filmmakers of his generation, opting for sincerity over irony and soulfulness over cynicism. Here, though, Green makes his first attempt at action and chases. Using freeze-frames, negative colour, Tim Orr's (his one and only DP) gritty cinematography and a restrained, yet comical score from Phillip Glass, he evokes '70s drive-in films as well as sun-drenched gothic thrillers. With an assured command over the medium that evokes Malick as well as Altman (two of his main influences), Green re-re-establishes himself as an indisputable filmmaking talent and the best of his generation.
Because he also encourages his actors to improvise, Green's films achieve an uncommon naturalism within their poetic undertones. A character can segue into a discussion about how he once saw a flock of birds kill themselves by flying straight into a house, or in this case a monologue about chigger bugs and it will sound completely conversational, even though it carries much weight. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Green does not use dialogue to call attention to his own prose, but to call attention to how his characters feel.
Once again, he gets the best out of his actors. Jamie Bell, that English kid who played Billy Elliot, fits Green's directorial style perfectly. Brooding, vulnerable and fuelled by anger without succumbing to its worst temptations, he makes Chris Munn into a character one would study in a classic piece of literature. Devon Alan gives a wonderful performance as the fragile, young Tim. Unlike many of Hollywood's young stars of his generation, Alan does not give the impression he's acting, but actually communicating. As Uncle Deel, Josh Lucas teeters on the brink of going way over the top, but reels it in just in time. Dermot Mulroney is fine too, and very well casted.
Green's first three films all take place in the South, but none of them reduces its characters to Southern archetypes. In George Washington, the African-American characters never face any racism or bigotry from the white characters, a trait that some viewers criticized. Here, the supporting characters blend seamlessly into the rusty, mud-soaked landscape as both character and scenery without forcing negative, dumb-as-a-brick connotations to the tapestry. Nature plays a big part in the narrative and Green knows how to have his characters and setting coexist peacefully even when enduring family tragedy, heartbreak and violence.
I remember when I saw All the Real Girls for the first time and not being able to get out of my seat once the film ended. That film had a profound effect on me as a viewer, as a lover of cinema and as a human being who has had his share of love and heartbreak. Undertow did not have the same effect, nor did I expect it to. It's not a love story, but a story that depicts brotherly love in the face of violence. Either way, love tends to be part of it. It remains amazing to me that a director this young can convey these themes with uncommon authenticity, style and wisdom. Green knows a thing or two about telling the truth. And about making great films.
Snow Angels (2007) ****½ / *****
"It's funny how you can tell the fake smiles in pictures. You notice people don't bring out cameras on sad days?"
Based on the richly textured novel by Stewart O'Nan, Snow Angels is a searing portrait of three interconnected families living in a small Pennsylvania town, their lives affected and, in some cases, irretrievably altered through a series of tragic events. As faithfully adapted for the screen and directed by David Gordon Green, the film's escalating power and cumulative emotional impact can only be attributed to the care that this incredibly perceptive and poetic filmmaker brings to the project. Both in his depiction of a wintry landscape of lost souls and in his painfully accurate portrayal of characters struggling to make their way in a world that oft-times seems cruelly unfair and confusing, Snow Angels rings resoundingly true.
Representative of four relationships in varying states of growth or disrepair, the film's centre of gravity is teenager Arthur Parkinson (Michael Angarano), who watches as his parents, Louise (Jeanetta Arnette) and Don (Griffin Dunne), mutually separate and his college professor father moves out of the house. At school, the cutely bespectacled Lila (Olivia Thirlby) has her eyes on him, but her obvious attempts at starting something romantic are lost upon Arthur, who can't imagine someone would be interested in him.
At his job as a busboy at a local Chinese restaurant, he works alongside his former babysitter Annie (Kate Beckinsale), at the time a teen herself and now a somewhat hardened and overworked mother going through a difficult divorce with perpetual screw-up of a husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell). Against her better judgement, Annie has begun a seedy affair with Nate Petite (Nicky Katt) behind the back of his wife and her best friend and co-worker Barb (Amy Sedaris). When the unthinkable strikes after Annie's and Glenn's 4-year-old daughter Tara (Gracie Hudson) goes missing, it is the catalyst for everyone to finally face what they mean to each other and where they stand in the choices they've made.
Snow Angels begins with what could only be looked at as a harbinger of doom to come. Arthur's marching band practice on the high school football field is suddenly disrupted when two nearby gunshots ring out in the frosty air. Rewinding the clock by several weeks, the film aims to explore what leads to this fateful moment in time, and for 106 minutes, Green holds us in rapt attention even as we occasionally find ourselves shrinking down in our seats, aware (even if subconsciously) of the inevitable conclusion being built toward. While there are light-hearted moments to be had, and the adorably burgeoning relationship between Arthur and Lila offers glimmers of revelatory hope, Snow Angels is extremely bleak and uncompromising in its tone and narrative turns. At the same time, save for a somewhat forced opening monologue by the overbearing band leader, the film is never less than glaringly authentic.
The ensemble of characters are true originals, feeling, looking and sounding like real people rather than vaguely developed screenplay pawns. In the very specific milieu Green is working within, his characters are flawed, sometimes troubled, but sympathetic even in spite of some of the less savoury choices they make. All of them are simply trying to navigate the circumstances they've found themselves in and, unfortunately, a map has not been made to guide them.
In a film of emotionally rattling moments, it is in the smaller, quieter interludes of human connection and reflection that are often most poignant. The way, for example, that Arthur gives Lila a pencil from his locker as a spur-of-the-moment present, is naive in the extreme, and yet exactly why Lila is charmed by him. A conversation they later have in Arthur's bedroom where he tells her about his remembrances of having Annie as a babysitter are heartbreaking in their subtle comments on the way innocuous childhood memories have a way of holding greater nostalgic value years later. Another moment in which Arthur and his mum reminisce over a photo album is unpredictably insightful.
As with all the other four films Green has directed, the actors in Snow Angels are all doing some of the best work they've ever had in their careers, clearly delighted to be able to sink their teeth into unusually complex, three-dimensional roles. As Arthur, Angarano is just about as good as it gets for male actors of his late-teen/early-twenties age group. He has an everyman quality about him that makes him instantly identifiable, but also the kind of face that you just want to hug. He is perfect as Arthur, an otherwise ordinary teenager whose sensitivity and heart run a little deeper than most. Because of this notion, he and Lila, an embracer of the offbeat who refuses to conform to stereotypes, make for an undeniably sweet couple. Olivia Thirlby is an utter delight as Lila, worldly and intelligent yet mischievous and vulnerable.
As the morally torn Annie, Beckinsale is a revelation. When you put aside the vampire-killing roles, she has been superb in the past (in Emma, Haunted, The Aviator) but, sort of like Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, she's never been given the chance to essay a role with quite so many layers and interior demands. She's obviously a gorgeous woman, but Green shoots her like the saddest one in the world, and it helps her to completely dig into the darker corners of a person's psyche. Her final on-screen look and utterance of "Oh my..." is especially haunting. It's usually the kind of performance that wins Oscars, if we were talking about a "bigger" film, of course.
In perhaps the most difficult part to pull off, Sam Rockwell is mesmerizing as Glenn, a man who can't seem to ever do right - his forgetting to bring a stuffed bunny he has bought for Tara on one of the their days spent together is particularly symbolic of this - and whose mounting religious faith is at direct odds with the actions he takes in the third act. In lesser hands, Glenn could have become over-the-top and too broadly played, but Rockwell makes him as credible as the rest of the characters. As an actor who's been in more than thirty films in less than two decades, it never ceases to amaze me how Rockwell can make you laugh hysterically one moment and break your heart the next.
Emanating a sense that what happens to these characters not only could happen in real life, but has, Snow Angels is mesmerizing in its sharp, fully-realized gaze at lives approaching a crossroads from which only some of them will reach the other side. Beautifully photographed by Tim Orr, taking advantage of his chilly, ice-drenched setting, it's ultimately such a provocative and effective film because of how David Gordon Green handles the tough material, lending equal weight to both the extraordinary and deceptively mundane moments of life in motion that make all of us startlingly, stingingly and intensely human.
"I forgive you. I don't even know you, but I forgive you."
Pineapple Express (2008) **** / *****
[he examines the joint]
Saul: "It's almost a shame to smoke it. It's like killing a unicorn... with, like, a bomb."
I was never a fan of stoner comedies. I mean, I like to smoke pot as much as the next guy, but I've always had a hard time getting into the humour those films usually offer. The only real pothead comedies that I truly enjoy are The Big Lebowski, Up in Smoke, and a large portion of the Harold & Kumar misadventures. Frankly I'm of the opinion that most pot comedies feel like they were written by someone very stoned, and let's just say that writers don't always do their best work when they're extra-baked. (They might THINK their stuff is hilarious, but usually it's not. That's just the weed talking.) You'll definitely find a few cannabis-caked giggles in trash like Half-Baked, Grandma's Boy, and Smiley Face - just not enough to sustain a whole film, if it's me you're asking.
So it is with much pleasure, enthusiasm, and recently-applied Visine that I find myself completely in love with Pineapple Express, which just may be the Casablanca of stoner films. Or perhaps it's more like "When Ultra-High Harry Met Super-Stoned Sally," but either way Pineapple Express isn't just hilarious, it's pretty damn sharp and clever too. It has some of the funniest "weed culture" insights since Richard Linklater's fantastic Dazed & Confused - which I wouldn't call a full-bore pot comedy, but it sure isn't shy about passing those joints around. Best of all, while Pineapple Express will absolutely appeal to both the casual and committed pot-smokers, it's also just a very funny buddy comedy/action flick parody that comes bearing the very unique stamp of that unique director that is David Gordon Green.
How ironic (and downright miraculous) is it that a filmmaker who has been making art (not just "movies") for almost a decade eventually ended up directing a guns & weed comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco? And if you think the guy's dry, low-key, and slyly sober style has been squashed by the Hollywood Movie Machine, then you're in for a big treat with this flick. Pineapple Express is certainly "accessible" in true multiplex fashion, but it also has several memorable touches of strange wit, unexpected character, and just plain old random weirdness - you can tell you're in the hands of a filmmaker who actually wants to deliver a big, odd concoction of a film.
The plot is enjoyably simple: Two potheads find themselves on the run from a crooked cop and a violent drug lord after one of the stoners accidentally witnesses a murder. (The title refers to the world's most powerful marijuana, so intoxicating that apparently it smells like "god's vagina.") So while early word on Pineapple Express has called it a partial homage to the buddy action comedies of the 1980s, what I saw in this film comes from a decidedly late-'70s format. Imagine if Richard Rush or Don Siegel had directed the first Cheech & Chong film, and that's what Pineapple Express feels like to me. And that feels good.
"A dude, a lady, and a cop? That's like a massacre, man!"
We all know Seth Rogen's a very funny guy by this point and he does a very fine job of creating a central nebbish who simply wants to enjoy his weed and get through life without bothering anyone. As his partner in perpetual paranoia, the normally stoic James Franco is allowed to let his hair down here and have an absolute ball with his role. (If you've never seen "Freaks & Geeks," then you'll probably be shocked to learn that Franco has such comedy chops. I, however, was very entertained but not at all surprised.) Best of all, Rogen and Franco strike a fantastic chemistry together (which isn't surprising either, since they've known each other since they were teenagers), with the former a neurotic and self-centered (but ultimately sweet) nobody and the latter a soft-spoken and frequently clueless (but occasionally insightful) weed-sponge.
As is always the case when Rogen and Judd Apatow are on the job, the bong is over-packed with colourful supporting characters. Once again we have a film that all but screams "This Danny McBride dude is FUNNY!" (This guy redefines the phrase "scene-stealer," particularly as part of one of the funniest film brawls I've ever witnessed.) As the snarling bad guys, Gary Cole and Rosie Perez are clearly having a lot of fun riffing off each other. Even more arcane antics come from the likes of Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader, Ken Jeong, Amber Heard ... plus we get some of the funniest stuff from Nora Dunn and Ed Begley Jr. ("Angie, you're a fucking idiot. I say that with love.") in quite some time. I chuckle just thinking about it. Enthusiastic film geeks who buy a ticket for Pineapple Express hoping for some choice "quotables" will NOT go away disappointed.
"You just got killed by a Daewoo Lanos, motherfucker!"
Pineapple Express is, of course, an unapologetically raunchy, appreciably scrappy, and exceedingly violent little comedy, and it's a "matinee for relative grown-ups" that will almost certainly entertain its intended audience. Green and company keep the material moving at a very brisk clip, some of the more conventional comedy stops are interrupted by unexpected sequences of admirable... weirdness, and the whole thing looks like it was as much fun to shoot as it was to watch. And even if you wouldn't know weed from green wool, Pineapple Express works as a fast-paced buddy comedy with lots of laughs and a few hilariously unpleasant surprises. It's not exactly a "dark" comedy, but it sure isn't scared of making mirth out of morbidity. Let's say that once the bullets start flying, Franco becomes Bugs Bunny and Rogen becomes Daffy Duck. And you know what those guys do to their enemies.
"War is upon you! Prepare to suck the cock of karma!"
In other words, I liked this flick a lot, not just because it gave me some "funny pot schtick" from a bunch of entertaining actors and it's directed by a man I admire immensely - but because it's a comedy that takes chances, hearkens back to a weirder generation, and doles out as many surprises as it does big laughs. I'd call it a near-perfect mix between art-house cleverness and mainstream amusement. Plus, man, it's worth seeing just for Franco's frequently fried facial expressions. This guy should never do "drama" again.
Saul: "BFFF?
Dale: Best Fuckin' Friends Forever, man!"
