George Washington

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