Green No More: A second offering of Southern lives in progress

Was George Washington a fluke? No, it represented a genuine cultural moment—the small miracle of young, white filmmaker David Gordon Green connecting his artistic ambitions to the lives of poor, rural black and white kids. Green (perfect name) looked inside the souls of those forgotten souls. It was a wonderful discovery, anticipating the astonishing communion of white pop with r&b on Justin Timberlake’s Justified album. Our media doesn’t know what to do with such gentle instances of social and spiritual integration. This may explain the more rapturous acclaim for All the Real Girls, Green’s follow-up movie, which is much like George Washington except that it excludes black faces from the screen.

All the Real Girls’ young-adult love story is overtrodden territory; the magic just doesn’t happen. When 18-year-old Noel (Zooey Deschanel) confides to 22-year-old Paul (Paul Schneider), "I like you ‘cuz I can say what’s awn my mind," it seems labored rather than revelatory. Yet this white Southern romance has been hailed by reviewers who were uncomfortable—or disoriented—when looking at black screen figures. (For them to finally see the poetry in Green’s private, allusive method takes back the advance of George Washington and reinstates the usual solipsism of indie film culture.) They applaud Green’s feel for American youth’s shy pulse like it was typical mainstream romanticism.

Staying aloof from pop culture, Green saved his first feature from repeating cliches of black teens as social reprobates. Now, he (unavoidably) competes with pop culture’s emphasis on young people’s exploitable sex lives. All the Real Girls’ mill-town characters differ from those in Porky’s or American Pie only because they speak in Green’s awkward, lyrical code—a kind of reverse slang that (even in Paul’s friendship with Noel’s jealous brother Tip) says nothing new. Green’s a private artist; his introspection led to George Washington’s amazing multiracial empathy, but here it just feels sentimental. Paul and Noel’s yearnings don’t connect to anything beyond themselves. (And Noel’s female perspective is overwhelmed by Paul’s heartache.) In George Washington, Green’s poetic awkwardnesses and philosophical flights were justified by the vibrant, documentary-like performances. But here, in a terribly strained melodramatic scene, Paul argues with his mother (Patricia Clarkson) who works as a clown in a hospital’s children’s ward, and the mother’s sexual resentment erupts in tears. Tears in clown make-up! No caring producer would have let Green get away with such a mawkish embarrassment. The intergenerational confrontation recalls but doesn’t match the startling scene in Red Sky at Morning when mother and son (Claire Bloom and Richard Thomas) clashed, showing both the Experienced and the Innocent in a dual rite of passage.

It seems Green did not get the guidance he needed to sharpen his poetic gestures or move his spiritual inquiry past naivete into the sublime realm of Wild Reeds, Say Anything or George Washington. (When Nasia asks Buddy to say he loves her, the scene’s wonder comes from seeing this profound need rise out of two young beings.) Paul’s courtly Southern gesture—kissing the palm of Noel’s hand—is sweet, but it lacks genius. That’s what Justin Timberlake (and his co-writer/producer Timbaland) achieve, consciously remaking the ardent profundity of an earlier generation’s love call. In Timberlake/Timbaland’s awesome single "Cry Me a River"—a remake so complete it’s a brand-new testimony—the song’s cascading sadness makes an elegant display of male heartbreak. ("You told me you loved me/Why did you leave me/All alone?") They take the melodically similar 2001 Aaliyah track "We Need a Resolution" and revise Timbaland’s tough, subversive backing vocals into a fresh realization of masculine tenderness. This gets us somewhere—past hiphop’s proverbial stud posturing, nearer to what Jean-Pierre Leaud felt in Godard’s Masculine Feminine and that tongue-tied lad in Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing who scrawled a girl’s initial into his own chest. In All the Real Girls, sexually experienced Paul courts virginal Noel like a guy closed off from any worldly experience or influence; he’s a player without a rule book—or a Walkman.

Green has mistimed this romance past the true moment of first love (or lust). He may be divulging his and Schneider’s own diary secrets but interweaving moody scenes of North Carolina loneliness and industrial indifference makes a less interesting contrast than the signs of unsinkable spirit (and faith) in George Washington. And he doesn’t remake our understanding of the modern romantic condition as Timberlake does. (They use gorgeous soundscapes instead of portentous landscapes.) "Cry Me a River" perfects the similar saga of a young man learning to feel; it’s defensive, but it has a callow essence that is true to today’s sex-stressed youth—and that distinguishes it from the saucy cabaret standard "Cry Me a River" of the 1950s. Timberlake reveals what some white boys have lately grasped from black pop’s romantic tradition—not cockiness but a fearless acceptance of their own sensitivity. Timbaland’s aural effect of an engine running down depicts machismo breaking down, subtly exposing Justin’s hurting heart—the very effect Green is after with Paul.

Green almost taps into this sorrow but Paul’s revelations remain largely inchoate. Collaborating with Schneider (a classmate at the North Carolina School of the Arts), Green means to be confessional. But despite Schneider’s self-revealing performance, the effect of their teamwork feels banal—way behind Timberlake/Timbaland’s realization of male desire. On "Nothin’ Else," Justin sings, "I even been askin’ everybody what they think/But I don’t know why because they don’t know you/Been askin’ other guys what they’d say/But I don’t know why cuz they don’t do what I do." He’s like the soloist in a doo-wop group vouchsafing his soul to the public. Timberlake and Timbaland work past pop’s cynicism (now distilled in 50 Cent, "I’m in there having sex/I’m not into making love") so that as the chorus of "Cry Me a River" repeats—and burrows into your subconscious—it leaves no doubt as to who’s crying.

Schneider strives to be as poignant and comes close thanks to cinematographer Tim Orr’s use of an intimate, captured-by-snapshot quality for his close-ups. Paul is frequently unfocused so that only his accent and some eccentric comic expressions ("strong as a bird, fast as a coat," "just come on back") give him country-boy definition. Not radiant like the kids in George Washington, his dark eyebrows rise almost from the center of his full-cheeked face. He’s the kind of regular guy girls say they really like—not pretty, but plain handsome (therefore deadly), his smile an open door to a winning nature. Schneider reminds us of how far model types like Brad Pitt distract us from life. Paul hasn’t got a gym body, but even more than the long-haired, beer-guzzling Tip (Shea Whigham) and the other friends who ride bikes and spit tobacco, he’s a real piece of boy, as the saying goes—proof that Green is onto something.

All the Real Girls’ quotidian etudes offer life in progress, while the "story" happens underneath. That’s the basis of Green’s artiness—too bad it expresses the anguish of love less potently than the best pop music. Paul’s dancing The Running Man behind Noel’s back dimly evokes the influence of black culture on white revelry, yet the scene also feels like the phony poetry in Punch-Drunk Love. Green flirts with date-movie whimsy—those dangerous, often racially restricted tropes, in which romantic fantasy is disconnected from politics. To a large degree, that’s been the shameless history of Hollywood’s white-centered movies, and it’s what makes them meaningless (as in everything Nora Ephron touches). Such movies don’t weigh on our consciousness or imagination; they merely flatter the mainstream’s vanity. Green should have learned to fight, defy and transcend those conventions as Timberlake does so beautifully.

At a George Washington Q&A, Green described the end of childhood: "You reach an age where politics and your parents’ hostilities come into play." The overly poetic All the Real Girls is disappointing because Green seems to have forgotten that that awareness was his strength. />