The Early Films of David Gordon Green

George Washington – All The Real Girls – Undertow

Sep 21, 2009

One of the great American film makers of his generation, David Gordon Green's early, dramatic independent films could best be described as cinematic tone poems.

Before scoring box-office success with the hit comedy, Pineapple Express, Green, heir apparent to auteur Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven), specialized in Southern Gothic cinema.

Green's first feature film is about poor Southern youths whiling away their days in a small town, shaded from the summer sun by walnut trees and empty factories. When an unforeseen tragedy occurs, the young innocents must contend with a stain of regret and despair usually reserved for adults.

Naturalistic and pastoral in ways that are all but impossible to convey once a million bucks and unlimited resources are laid at a directors feet by the Gods of Hollywood, George Washington is a work of art that Green will never be able to repeat; not to say he will never again make a great film; he’ll just never again be able to make that great film.

While in no way would it subtract from the greatness of George Washington, one would be disingenuous not to mention the immense debt Green's film owes to Charles Burnett's classic, Killer of Sheep.

In his second feature, All The Real Girls, David Gordon Green once again focused on small town America, this time by way of love and romance. Starring his old classmate from The North Carolina School of the Arts, Paul Schneider (also co-writer) and the lovely Zooey Deschanel (Elf).

All The Real Girls is one of the most unique romance films to come along in years. The characters act and react to jealousy, betrayal, and heartache, the way real people do.

There are no meet-cutes, or contrived misdirection, or overly sentimental resolutions. All The Real Girls contains moments so authentic, so simple, viewers may blush at the improbable realization that Mr. Green has lifted scenes from their own life.

With Undertow, Green attempted to follow in the footsteps of great Southern Gothic storytellers like Tennessee Williams and Flannery `O Connor. With a screenplay co-authored by Joe Conway, based on a story by Lingard Jervey, and a big studio (MGM) behind him, Green must have felt the weight of millions of dollars and several studio execs strapped to his back.

Retro 70’s opening title graphics, Dermot Mulroney (Box of Moonlight), and enough beat-up Plymouths and Chryslers to fill a used car lot; at first Undertow appears to be a Tarantino-style homage to Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham.

But, the initial set-up is promising in its simplicity: Mulroney plays the patriarch to two young boys living on a pig farm; the older boy played by Jamie Bell (Billy Eliot) is your average run of the mill teenage rebel without a cause: breaking and entering, fighting and scraping with the local gentry, etc.

The youngest is not so typical (not for a Hollywood melodrama, anyway): Devon Alan (Simon Birch) plays Tim, a sickly sad little boy who secretly eats pig crap and dirt, and then vomits. This particularly poignant portrait of a motherless child initially indicates either David Gordon Green’s insistence on disrupting the Hollywood apple cart, or portends the future direction of the film; and when Josh Lucas (Poseidon) arrives on the scene, we assume the former.

Lucas plays Mulroney’s fresh out jail brother; So, when its revealed that Mulroney and Lucas’s father left them some valuable Mexican gold coins, it’s only a matter of time before the bad brother will attempt to steal the coins.

At this point, one is expecting a re-tread of James Foley’s underrated classic At Close Range (1986); but, David Gordon Green has different plans: the boys take the gold coins and run, with their criminal uncle in pursuit.

Without giving away the ending, suffice it to say, in the final act, David Gordon Green throws audiences a much-deserved curve-ball, by transforming what could have been a standard Hollywood melodrama into an emotionally powerful work.

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