George Washington

David Gordon Green is one of the new emergences of the 00's. His films, along with those of Ramin Bahrani & Darren Aronofsky marked new indie films that were of a higher quality than past ones, and had clearly defined ambitions within the films. Green's GEORGE WASHINGTON is his first film, and thus his first entry into the new plethora of 00's director/writers. The film is extremely off base for indie films, and it thus breaks away from the self-defined genre of indie films. Like horror, there are two different types of indie films. The first is that which succumbs to the clichés of the genre (and some of those films can still be good) and the other is that which plays with its genre. Green accomplishes this with GEORGE WASHINGTON, which, in its title, would suggest a different kind of story, but when Green illuminates us with lurid green colors and graffiti plastered walls behind twelve year old black children, an unexpectedness immediately captivates. In its languor, the words of laconic children slowly swath over and romp across that which we expect. The children speak about sex and they talk as if they're eighty year olds reminiscing. As horrors develop and we see the reactions of each of the children, a beauty is found within that which we would not have expected. This is art. This is Green showing us his talents as a director. Both aesthetically and modestly, he has shown how in the most dubious of artistically minded places, there is evil and there is unimportance. Even as a terrible event befalls Green's characters, they act in the same languor as the endless summer which envelops them, the film, and ultimately the surveyors.
George Washington: ★★★★