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Staring: Candace Evanofski, Donald Holden, Mike Hertel, Jack Grindle, John McCaffrey
Director: Clu Gulager, David Gordon Green
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Product Details
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: EVANOFSKY,CANDACE
EAN: 9780780025035
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780025032
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2002-03-12
Running Time: 90
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 2000

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Editorial Review
Description
Over the course of one hot summer, a group of children in the rural south are forced to confront a tangle of difficult choices in a decaying world. An ambitiously constructed, sensuously photographed meditation on adolescence, the first feature film by director David Gordon Green features breakout performances from an award-winning ensemble cast.

Amazon.com
George Washington is surely one of the most visually arresting debuts in recent American cinema. Loitering among the dilapidated machinery and detritus littering a small town in North Carolina, 24-year-old director David Gordon Green and cinematographer Tim Orr transform the listless confines of growing up poor into breathtaking beauty. Green has referenced Terence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978) as an overriding influence, and the languorous grace of his portrait of childhood lives up to the comparison.

Tracing the interwoven stories of a group of kids, black and white, over a few pivotal days and one accidental death, Green elicits nuanced performances from a mostly nonprofessional cast and captures an understated poetry through clearly improvised dialogue. Where Harmony Korine's depiction of childhood outcasts in Gummo goes astray in its insistence upon depravity and shrill eccentricity, George Washington maintains a perfect balance between oddity, loosely configured realism, and the sublime. --Fionn Meade

Customer Reviews

Good start, 2008-09-11
George Washington was the first feature film ever made by indy wunderkind director David Gordon Green. It was released in 2000, to generally favorable reviews, and it truly deserved them. It has been recently released on an invaluable Criterion Collection DVD which I recently purchased. Most critics erred and went in for a facile comparison to filmmaker Terrence Malick, but this film has several things that Malick's films do not have. Yes, like Malick, Green is fond of lingering poetic shots of seemingly everyday things, but Green's film is far more concerned with individuals than any of Malick's four feature films are. Malick's 1978 Days Of Heaven does have its reach, though, as the black and white still photographs at the end of George Washington homage the black and white stills of that film, just as a young girl's narration echoes the young female character's in Days Of Heaven. But, the characters in George Washington are mostly poor North Carolina preteens of an eternal present, not historic artifacts, and they convey a sense of self that is absent in Malick's films, which mostly deal with issues, not people.
That said, this film is not really a narrative, more of a simple series of linked vignettes that trace a several week period over a summer, which opens with a dreamy panoramic and poetic monologue spoken by a young girl named Nasia (Candace Evanofski), that weaves poetry out of the banal snippets that drift in and out of even the most prosaic minds, such as, `I like to go to beautiful places where there's waterfalls and empty fields.' This is not immanently poetic, but juxtaposed with the camera work it takes on a heightened, almost ecstatic, state. Some criticize the film by stating real children do not speak that way, but, a) I've known them, and a read of Anne Of Green Gables shows they've always been around, and b) the poesy is not of the character, but what the character says in relation to her station on life.... This film is not a great film, but it shows great potential, just as Malick's first film, Badlands, showed great potential, but not accomplishment. But it is a special film because it makes its specialness from what is remembered by all people, from their youth. As they go on with life, George and Nasia will likely drift apart, but both will have their own reasons for remembering that long ago summer the film charts, and we viewers will understand why.

A stunning and poetic debut film -- the rebirth of a nation, 2007-10-30
The children of this film speak of matters and in a manner that suggests a maturity beyond their years. They have to, since they have only peers to serve as moral guides. The adults in their life are preoccupied with other matters -- making a living by recycling the materials left behind from another age. While set in an unnamed small town in deep South, the film feels timeless -- the characters seem drawn from a Faulkner novel, the young woman who gives her voice to the film is not so much narrating as establishing a poetic space within which to assess the story, a story of innocence lost and of how to establish hope and meaning in a situation that appears to give so little opportunity for transcendence. It is in that context that a new George Washington, a young dreamer, with hopes for a brighter future appears -- the narrowness of the world experience available to these children is indicated by how they envision their potential: the narrator thinks that maybe George Washington, who she admires, could head up some kind of parade ... he decides to dress up as superman. There is something touching and profound and telling about the way that the children in the film respond to the tragedies both minor (jealousy, rivalry) and profound (accidental death, suicide) -- something about the fragility of the communities we build up, that suggests (without being bluntly allegorical) the difficulty of community in general and of American community in particular. How do we experience rebirth as a nation? Who can stand to unify us and give us hope? How do we hold out hope for the future as opportunities dwindle in our communities?

The film aims to explore a territory that adults know little about or choose to forget: that children (especially children who are left to themselves a good deal) don't think of themselves as innocent even in their play, and that they see themselves as making decisions fraught with moral consequences, that the questions who to be friends with, who to trust, who to love, and how to deal with hurt are every bit as profound for the child as the so-called "deeper" philosophical and political and moral questions that even adults tend to evade but discuss in situations of crisis. The film is slow -- it inhabits the same cinematic space as films by Terrence Malick, or some of the films by Gus Van Sant -- but it rewards patience (not in the sense of "its hard to watch but it is culturally important so suffer through it" but in the sense of the best films that, if you let them, and don't judge them by your own standards of entertainment, they can teach you something about what is possible in cinema). The opening sequence, in which two children break up, and we are introduced to the space of the story and to the voice of the "narrator," is one of the most thrilling openings in any film I've seen -- all at once the very first time I saw this film (on a whim) I knew I was seeing something profound and original. I've enjoyed everything by David Gordon Green that I've seen since (Undertow and All the Real Girls) but nothing matches the fluent and meditative originality of this film that overwhelmed me on first viewing and that continues to move and astonish me even after several viewings. In my book this is one of the profound and enduring debut films of a filmmaker whose work places substance over style and yet manages to be unique and original in the telling, films like "Badlands," "Stranger than Paradise," "Sex, Lies and Videotape," "Shadows," and, more recently, "Funny Ha Ha."

Visually stunning, 2009-12-09
David Gordon Greer's feature debut is to be commended on many levels. A cast of young non-professionals presents a tale, not unlike others (like "Mean Creek") but without malice. Certainly, the visuals are inspired by "Days of Heaven", and Mr. Green has expanded on an earlier screenplay, but it is a complete narrative of a decaying society and the effect it has on the young people. Hope and despair abound, and the young cast should be applauded. The Criterion DVD has loads of extras, including the very disturbing "A Day with the Boys" by Clu Gulager, supposedly an influence for Mr. Green. Mr. Green's final film has to do with conscience and pride. That the cast is mostly Black is irrelevent. All kids could find themselves in this stupid quagmire... Let's hope it doesn't happen.

not for everyone...but an indisputable masterpiece for others, 2008-03-09
firstly; this movie is unashamedly derivative of terrence malick. structure-wise, down to the narrative techniques, it's a repositioning of 'badlands', but all i can say about that is, malick and green now work together. if malick doesn't care, you probably shouldn't either.
to hold to the malick theme and 'badlands' and address people's issues with the dialogue, all i can say is 'i found a toaster' (just one of many laughable, stupid lines of dialogue from 'badlands').
it is also very similar to 'gummo', less sensational, but both movies are remarkably important it their visually poetic displays of how we are letting this country rot and how the rusted and wrecked places the out of control, locomotive progression of our country/culture (ie: capitalism) leaves behind are still teaming with life like a desert. seemingly pointless and ugly life. both films leave this image sitting there almost as a question, how will we rectify this complex and very real situation? such things are so necessary that both films should be complimented and revered for putting them in our faces (see also: the entirity of 'the wire').
where the disconnect begins, i think, is in terms of the subject matter. this movie is about expieriencing death in the developmental stages of childhood. the pain, the guilt, the confusion, the struggle of little kids to say something or think something or do something that is as equally profound as death. being forced to ponder what life is about at a young age, to make sense of it before you should every have to do such a thing. being left behind to cope, create your own ritual, your own mythology, your own meaning, in a place that's been left behind and all set against a oh so meaningful festive backdrop with effectiveness unrivaled since shakespere. astonishing, simply astonishing.
to be honest, i haven't cared so much for green's other movies but this, it is my favorite movie ever.
there are definate reasons this film is so highly regarded.

I should like this film, but...., 2007-03-18
On paper, I should love this film. It has many thing I admire in films. It's beautifully shot in scope, it has a leisurely pace to it, and it's very understated at times. But it's also muddled, sloppily edited, incoherent, and the dialogue leaves something to be desired. The film has a real disjointed feel to it, and I don't think this is deliberate. David Gordon Green's follow up to this, All the Real Girls, had the same sloppy craftmanship that this film does, except that film has better performances. Some might say Green is attempting an expressionistic type of film, but he doesn't really pull it off. Directors who do make expressionistic films like this one was trying to be (Tarkovsky, Tarr, Sokurov, Kieslowski) do pull it off, and their films feel remarkably coherent, despite the ambiguity that exists in them. Here it doesn't work. Green gets points for making an independent film that really isn't like Hollywood at all (many indie films have an eye towards the mainstream), but it doesn't fully work.

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