At the Berlin Film Festival in February 2000, moviegoers got an early introduction to the work of a very young writer-director who would become one of the new century’s most important American filmmaking artists, then 24-year-old David Gordon Green. The world premiere of Green’s low-budget, independently made, and mysteriously titled George Washington was cause for celebration in the way it favored poetic visuals and real human behavior in telling the story of a group of youngsters in a poor North Carolina town. Shunning conventional narrative, controlled performances, and overly emphatic dialogue, George Washington was hailed by critics who welcomed it as a movie in the tradition of Charles Burnett and Terrence Malick.
Green’s follow-up, All the Real Girls, tells of the rehabilitation and heartbreak of a young ladies’ man (Paul Schneider) when he falls for a no-less-innocent teenage girl (Zooey Deschanel). While the love story is honestly heartfelt, Green never loses his touch for injecting humor into painful and awkward situations. All the Real Girls premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded a special jury prize “for emotional truth.”
Undertow, Green’s third feature, found him working with his idol, Terrence Malick, who served as co-producer and introduced Green to the story of an adolescent boy and his younger brother on the run from their murderous uncle. Featuring rapturous images lensed on Savannah, Georgia locations by Green’s steadfast cinematographer, Tim Orr, Undertow pays homage to other films like The Night of the Hunter and Southern-set action classics from the ’70s like Macon County Line, while always maintaining its own offbeat sensibility.
Another major force in independent filmmaking, University of Rochester graduate Lisa Muskat has been Green’s primary producer on all four of his feature films to date, and they will both appear in person at the Dryden on March 6 to present the local premiere of their latest collaboration, Snow Angels. Another deeply personal project that uniquely mixes humor with tragedy, Snow Angels tells converging stories of love and loss among two couples: one adult and one adolescent. Green’s most mature work to date also features his most impressive cast of experienced and fledgling actors: Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, Griffin Dunne, Amy Sedaris, Michael Angarano, and Olivia Thirlby.
The Snow Angels screening kicks off a David Gordon Green & Lisa Muskat retrospective that includes all of the above-mentioned films, some of which will be preceded by Green’s student films made at the North Carolina School of the Arts. The series will also include showings of three new independent features produced by Green and Muskat: Great World of Sound, directed by Green’s fellow NCSA-alum Craig Zobel; Jeff Nichols’ stunning debut, Shotgun Stories; and Chop Shop, Ramin Bahrani’s follow-up to his acclaimed Man Push Cart.
—Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department
