David Gordon Green has had
one of the more prolific and peculiar careers in 21st century
movies. Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, he made George Washington (2000), his feature debut, after graduating from
the North Carolina School for the Arts. Green was still in his mid-20s, yet his
craftsmanship, film literacy, attention to landscape and behaviour, and ability
to draw captivating naturalistic performances from a cast comprised largely of
non-actors indigenous to his rural location seemed preternaturally mature while
running on pure instinct. Somewhat entranced with its own awkwardness, an
unkind viewer could call it precious, but George
Washington is a film I find impossible to be unkind to; it’s gorgeous,
warm, curious, race-blind and age-blind, inherently timeless and flowing with
tenderness. It remains Green’s strongest work, though many of its successors
make such an appraisal easy.
Your Highness
All the Real Girls (2003), Undertow
(2004) and Snow Angels (2007)
retained the authentic regional flavour, sensitivity to character and obvious
affection for the maverick directors of the 1970s (Altman, Ashby, Malick, et
cetera), but they also used genre and semi-famous actors in ways that felt self-consciously
quirky. By the end of Green’s string of box office-oriented, high-concept
comedies Pineapple Express (2008), Your Highness (2011) and The Sitter (2011), it was easy to forget
that he might be one of his generation’s most distinctive filmmakers. (Though
it would be misleading to limit an assessment of Green’s career to his feature
directorial credits; he’s also the producer of a numerous independent films and
produced and directed episodes of Eastbound
and Down.) When praising Green amongst discerning film buffs I’ve often received
glances of incomprehension, but I can’t shake the integrity or promise of his
early work. I don’t believe for a moment that anyone trying to forge a steady
and diverse career in the industry is necessarily going to remain in full
control of everything they work on, nor do I believe that Green has ever
knowingly sold out. I’ve interviewed him twice, and, for what it’s worth, I
don’t detect a cynical cell in his grey matter.
Prince Avalanche
Which
brings us to the present and two reasons to feel vindicated for keeping faith
in Green’s cinematic vision. With some luck, Joe (2013), Green’s absorbing adaptation of the eponymous Larry
Brown novel, which stars an excellent Nicolas Cage, will find its way to local
screens soon. Prince Avalanche (2013)
meanwhile has already had its brief, limited theatrical run and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. Loosely based on the
Icelandic film Either Way (2011), Avalanche—the title an endearingly goofy
amalgamation of its twin protagonists names, Alvin and Lance—stars Paul Rudd
and Emile Hirsch as two guys—one older and engaged, the other younger and
preoccupied with getting laid—who spend the summer painting lines on a remote
stretch of highway, camping along the way and forging an unlikely but perfectly
plausible bond.
Prince Avalanche, again, obviously
The
film was prompted by the Texan band Explosions in the Sky, who proposed
collaborating with Green on a project to be made in Barstop State Park, which
was recovering from a massive fire. Avalanche
was then hastily developed and put into production, and the urgency seems to
have brought out Green’s inventiveness and his capacity for crafting story and
character from the simplest ingredients. (The film also exhibits Green’s
enduring affection for pre-digital culture, since I can’t figure out any other
reason for setting the story in 1988.) The focus is squarely on the rhythms of
work and downtime, on the funny way time has of transforming misunderstanding
into its opposite, or the way men can be oblivious to their own bullshit. Alvin
is uptight and pompous and poor Lance is, well, a few quarts short, but it’s
adorable, not to say frequently hilarious, to observe their struggles to
communicate, to express vulnerability and imagine their respective futures. As
for Green, Joe and Avalanche give us plenty of reason to
believe that his future holds many more works of idiosyncratic beauty.
No comments:
Post a Comment