George Washington Details

Heroes and villains

This debut film from David Gordon Green is a slow, impressionistic one, with reverential – or fetishist - attention paid to the physical aspects of colour and sound.

The final work looks gorgeous, full of golden light and bruised shadows, with a delicate guitar soundtrack, that marks a world a million miles away from, say, that of Larry Clark’s Kids.

There’s no rap music and very little swearing in this sunshine tale of young black kids and white railroad engineers in North Carolina. Instead of hand-held realism, we get startling and oddly affecting soliloquies from the youngsters, which punctuate the drifting visuals.

The story is told from the point of view of a precocious 12 year-old female narrator, and takes in the tragic event that is at the centre of one particular summer, and its effect on the semi-eponymous George.

He is physically extremely vulnerable, due to a rare physiological condition, yet ends up in a cape and hat; a homespun, Carolina-style superman. Whilst others talk, or talk around, what is happening, George – by chance or by design – says little, but ends up a hero through deeds rather than words.

There is more than a little guilt in George as well, yet Green backs away from any explicit, un-reflected, snapshots of plot or psyche. Instead, he trusts to impressions to speak, and this trust pays off – providing you don’t expect to hear everything in one go.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Nearly very good

The story centres around a fragment of the life of an introspective 13 year old boy, George, and his involvement in the accidental death of one of his friends. The film is about choices, guilt, redemption and the thin line between childhood and adulthood. It's beautifully shot, sensitively handled and superbly acted by the mostly young cast. The pace is accordlingly subtle.