IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Written & Directed by David Gordon Green
Plan B NR 89 min.
First off, let's be clear: this movie is not about George Washington. Expect no powdered wigs, no wooden teeth, no dollars across the Potomac. It is a movie about the end of childhood, the end of innocence, but despite one shocking tragedy, it is an innocence that trails off under the weight of its own inevitability.
The movie centers around a group of pre-teens in a small, decaying southern town. Most of them are black, but it's a racially mixed society. The narrator is Nasia (Candace Evanofski), a self-possessed 12-year-old who has just broken up with Buddy (Curtis Cotton III) because, as she tells their older friend Vernon (Damien Jewan Lee), he's too immature. "He's thirteen, you're twelve," says the exasperated Vernon, "you're supposed to be little kids!" Nasia has transferred her affections to George (Donald Holden), pretty much without George's participation or consent. Buddy sighs "I miss having her to talk to about my feelings," which doesn't sound all that immature.
Aside from the tragedy, nothing much happens. This movie has little to do with story. It has to do with moments. It's impressionistic, bits of light captured with short strokes, the languor of everyday life reflected in a defiantly uneventful style, beautifully photographed by Tim Orr (on film, not digital, an unusual pleasure in a contemporary no-budget picture.) Girls brush each other's hair and talk about boys and kissing. Boys roughhouse and splash in the public swimming pool. George adopts a stray dog, which he has to keep hidden because his Uncle Damascus (Eddie Rouse) hates animals.
Perhaps as much as anything it's about dreaming. Vernon and his nine-year-old white girlfriend Sonya (Rachael Handy) dream of getting away together, and abortively steal a car. Buddy dreams of getting Nasia back; he also dons a rubber dragon mask to change his identity. Nasia dreams of what a great man George will be. And George dreams of being a superhero. "I want to be the strongest man in the world," he says. George is soft in the head, both figuratively and literally - he has to wear a helmet. After he's acclaimed a hero for saving a boy from drowning, despite the fact that he's not supposed to go in the water because of his fragile head, he dons a superhero's cape and tights for the rest of the picture.
First feature director David Gordon Green has assembled a cast of non-actors, and they're wonderful. As a general rule, the younger they are the better they are; only some of the young adult men show a visible self-consciousness in front of the camera.
Evanofski's narrative voice is reminiscent of Terence Malick's Days of Heaven, and so is the sleepy semi-pastoral style. "I like to go to beautiful places," she says, "where there's waterfalls and empty fields."
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