Director: David Gordon Green

Summary: A group of children in a depressed town join forces to cover up a tragedy...

David Gordon Green makes a stunning directorial debut with GEORGE WASHINGTON, a highly poetic drama that tells the story of the inhabitants of a small, impoverished southern American town. Focusing on a group of five adolescent friends--George (Donald Holden), Nasia (Candace Evanofski), Buddy (Curtis Cotton III), Vernon (Damian Jewan Lee), and Sonya (Rachel Handy)--Green uses the town's barren landscape to provide a bleak, yet beautiful, backdrop for their day-to-day lives. After Nasia breaks up with Buddy for George, an introverted youth with an extremely sensitive fontanel, tragedy strikes and the friends are forced to come to terms with the situation. The resulting internal struggles send each individual into a search for redemption in intensely personal, yet very different, ways.
Green's film is reminiscent of Terrence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE in its potent blend of naturalistic acting, lush photography, and nostalgic voice-over. The 24-year-old shows a maturity that many older directors rarely attain. It is this overriding optimism that makes the film such an uplifting moviegoing experience, even amidst such somber circumstances. Also, there is an understated humor--most notably Paul Schneider's portrayal of Rico Rice--that keeps matters hopeful throughout. GEORGE WASHINGTON is an honest, thoughtful, and deeply transcendent motion picture.

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Robin Williams won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck nabbed one for Best Original Screenplay, but the feel-good hit Good Will Huntingtriumphs because of its gifted director, Gus Van Sant. The unconventional director (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy) saves a script marred by vanity and clunky character development by yanking soulful, touching performances out of his entire cast (amazingly, even one by Williams that's relatively schtick-free). Van Sant pulls off the equivalent of what George Cukor accomplished for women's melodrama in the 1930s and 40s: He's crafted an intelligent, unabashedly emotional male weepie about men trying to find inner-wisdom.

Matt Damon stars as Will Hunting, a closet maths genius who ignores his gift in favour of nightly boozing and fighting with South Boston buddies (co-writer Ben Affleck among them). While working as a university janitor, he solves an impossible calculus problem scribbled on a hallway blackboard and reluctantly becomes the prodigy of an arrogant MIT professor (Stellan Skarsgård). Damon only avoids prison by agreeing to see psychiatrists, all of whom he mocks or psychologically destroys until he meets his match in the professor's former childhood friend, played by Williams. Both doctor and patient are haunted by the past and, as mutual respect develops, the healing process begins. The film's beauty lies not with grand climaxes, but with small, quiet moments. Scenes such as Affleck's clumsy pep talk to Damon while they drink beer after work, or any number of therapy session between Williams and Damon offer poignant looks at the awkward ways men show affection and feeling for one another. --Dave McCoy

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Directors Commentary, Deleted Scene, Two Short Films, Documentary At Berlin Film Festival
Year:	2000
Release Date:	April 22, 2002
Runtime:	86 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B F I V D 527
Keywords:	General, George, Washington, Drama
Genre:	Drama