George Washington is a 2000 American drama film about a group of children in a depressed small town in North Carolina. The children band together to cover up a tragic mistake. The film is written and directed by David Gordon Green.

George Washington, along with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive and Terrence Malick's The New World, is the first seminal piece of American film art this decade has seen. When viewing George Washington, people often make the mistake of watching it in the same manner one watches the majority of films they see. Things like plot and structure are at the forefront of what they are looking for. The problem lies with the fact that George Washington isn't about plot or structure - it's about feelings and mood. Memory, regret, frustration and loss is what this film is about. Yes, there is a vague outline of traditional film narrative in the sense that events take place that propel the film into motion, but to allow (force?) yourself to view the film with your sights set on these ultimately rudimentary aspects is to do a great disservice to both yourself and the artist in question, David Gordon Green. In order to truly apprciate this film for the utter and complete masterpiece it is, you have to be willing to give yourself over to its "voluptuous languor", as film critic Roger Ebert so beautifully put it.

A great number of films have dealt with the theme of one's desire to transcend their position in life, but I'm not sure I've seen a single one deal with it in the way George Washington does, and execute it with such beauty and grace. This film is not afraid to allow its characters to fail the way other films dealing with this subject are. In fact, I would go as far to say the film's core is about failure. It revels in the heartbreak and melancholy that comes with both the reflection of life's missteps and where you are today because of them (George's aunt and uncle - in fact, all of the adults found in this film), and also experiencing them first hand in your youth (virtually every event the children in the film go through). Even the film's landscape is tantamount to this idea - a rustic, industrial wasteland, overgrowing with weeds and graffiti.

The true power of George Washington, and in filmmaker David Gordon Green, is its ability to reveal the overwhelming beauty hidden in not only the aforementioned vistas, but also the failures of the film's characters. This is accomplished through both the films stunning technical prowess (the direction, cinematography and musical score are simply unparalleled in my view) and its heartwrenching, essentialy poetic dialogue. Every time Nasia delivers one of her truly memorable monologues, my heart breaks in two. Vernon has a soliloquy that begins with "I wish..." that rivals anything I've heard in any film before or since in terms of sheer emotional weight. The extremely realistic, but still highly artistic way the dialogue is both written and delivered is something I've never actually seen pulled off in a film before.

Everything comes together in this film in such a way that is so rare and so transcendent that I truly feel like the importance of this film, at least from an artistic standpoint, can not be overstated. It is said that David Gordon Green obsessed over the work of Terrence Malick while preparing to make George Washington, and it's clear in not only the visual poetry and use of a musical score that is ambient in nature with long chords and drawn out sounds, but also the nearly crippling emotional impact the film has on you. To watch George Washington is to become immersed in a film and intoxicated in an environment and mood created by a film. It reminds you of the potential power hidden in this unique art form, and it reminded me of why I love movies.