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The foot of a young boy jumps off of a steel beam into the thin air. A band of light becomes an open door as we watch kids running in slow motion through the run-down streets of a deserted neighborhood. A boy in an alligator mask stands on an abandoned outdoor proscenium stage and recites poetry. All the while, the dirge-like sounds of a minimalist orchestra play in the background, sounds that somehow seem to stretch back to the beginning of time. George Washington, a new film opening this weekend at the Music Box in Chicago, is full of moments that are both incongruous and moving, powerful and magnificent. Though we're still only in the first month of 2001, I can state with all confidence that it is one of the best movies you'll see all year.

The film, directed by David Gordon Green in his feature-length debut, is a striking artistic statement. Shot in beautiful Cinemascope with largely non-professional actors, it's unlike anything you'll see in contemporary Hollywood. The story involves six kids ranging in age from 10 to 13 and the adults that move in and out of their lives. That the kids are mostly black while the adults are mostly white is neither overemphasized nor overlooked.

The plot revolves around the kids' friendships and how they change when, one day, an awful accident occurs. One of the many great things about George Washington, though, is how this basic narrative comes alive. It's not that the story is complex or even that the characters have tremendous depth, but the movie feels like life. These are real people with real worries and real joys. The issue of race is a perfect example. There aren't White characters and Black characters; there are white and black characters, who interact differently because of their color but aren't defined by their color.

The main protagonist is a boy named George (Donald Holden), a quiet kid who, like many 12-year-old boys, has dreams of greatness but whose circumstances undermine those hopes. Watching him, with both admiration and infatuation, is Nasia (Candace Evanofski), a seventh grader who acts as the film's narrator.

Nasia's voiceover runs throughout George Washington, from the gorgeous pre-credit sequence to the film's mesmerizing conclusion. It often acts as the glue between individual scenes, not so much explaining the action as commenting on life itself. But unlike the movies of Martin Scorsese, which teem with philosophical musings, Nasia's words are simple, as if a 12-year-old girl who had had a particularly provocative day was offering you her thoughts. They're simple ones, but they are as true as the smile of a baby who recognizes her mother.

The narration is particularly effective when Nasia subtly makes us part of her circle--asking the audience a question, seeing if we, too, have felt what she feels. In the film's opening, she is describing the "grown-ups in my town": "It was hard for them to find their peace. Don't you know how that feels?" Later, as George is struggling with something he's done, she says, "when you walk around with no one to laugh with you or hold your hand, that's a different kind of walk, you know?" The answer to both questions is a resounding yes, an affirmation that we sense deep in our gut.

David Gordon Green's film has this amazing power to draw us into the world he has created and yet make it seem like our own. When a boy and girl break up at the beginning of the movie, their exchange is both achingly specific and profoundly universal. "Can I kiss you one last time?" the boy asks. "Just tell me that you love me," she responds. "Do you love me?"

This combination of specificity and universality reaches its apex in Green's approach to myth. It's obviously no accident that the film's main character is named George Washington (actually, that's his nickname, but we don't find that out till near the end), but the movie refuses to settle for the easy irony--the smug condescension that mocks the notion that "anybody can grow up to be president." Instead, it explores the notion of greatness,
of heroism, of myth, as seen in the actions of a few youngsters on the cusp of adulthood.

George's clothes include a broken football helmet, a superhero costume, and a Davy Crockett-style fur hat. None of them seem to fit very well, but that doesn't stop him from contemplating his next act of greatness. That this might be as simple (foolish?) as directing traffic on a street that doesn't need direction is irrelevant, the movie tells us. For just see what happens when a white man joins in and helps him--somehow this moment of communion in the midst of decay brought tears to my eyes. At the film's conclusion, Green suddenly flashes pictures of famous Americans at famous junctures; and we're confronted with the question of what is greatness, what is the American myth that we cling to, and who might be the next George Washington?

A couple weeks ago, I got into an argument with my friend Garth about the movie House of Mirth. I stated that I was tired of costume dramas that wept for the upper crust of 100 years ago, that I longed for movies that somehow
speak to our culture and our problems and our hopes. Without realizing it at the time, I was asking for movies like George Washington. It's relatively easy to make a beautiful film with beautiful actors and beautiful costumes and beautiful scenery. But to make a beautiful movie about garbage dumps and city swimming pools and an abandoned couch lying on the wrong side of the tracks, well that's greatness. Near the end of the film, Nasia remarks wistfully, "sometimes I smile and laugh when I think about all the great things you're going to do."

J. Robert Parks 1/28/2001