MUBI

This debut film by David Gordon Green is a massive work of art. Photographed in golden browns and sun-lit hues, the film features a group of teens (all non-actors) in a rundown southern town as they deal with themselves, each other, and the consequences of tragedy. Lyrical to its core, the film offers a heartbreaking meditation on small town America not seen in recent cinema. In Green’s pensive universe, the days role by with a languid ease reminiscent of the heyday of Terrance Malick. To watch young George (Donald Holden) walk his destitute dog through the ramshackle streets, infused with a gorgeous piano ballad and his friend’s haunting voice-over, is to witness an otherwise small movie moment made poetic and profound. The dialogue, too, is extraordinary without ever calling attention to itself, as when the brash Vernon (Damian Jewan Lee) delivers what amounts to a classic cinematic soliloquy on the floor of a bathroom. Green and his cinematographer, Tim Orr, take us beyond the atmospheric, somehow visualizing the universal internals of both adolescence and adulthood; the wants and needs that are felt by everyone but ignored by movies. “George Washington” has grace, soul and vision; those who call it slow are dismissing ideas that are meant to take time. A truly humbling cinematic experience.