Four Decades of the Forum
Aditya will be in Berlin this week as part of the event Four Decades of the Forum. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Forum, twelve filmmakers were invited to curate a program of twelve films, choosing from the hundreds that have screened since 1970 at the Forum section of the Berlinale. Aditya chose George Washington by David Gordon Green. Both of them will be there to discuss the film: David Green about how he made it and Aditya about how much he loves it (basically).
But best of all, it’s also a chance to see George Washington on 35mm print at the Arsenal, one of the nicest cinemas in Berlin. The screening is on Saturday July 4 at 9.30 pm followed by the discussion. So if you happen to be in Berlin and celebrating American Independence Day isn’t your thing, then come watch this movie. It’s great. Or if you’ve seen it and don’t think it’s so great, then you can watch one of the other eleven movies that are screening in the event.
Below is the introduction Aditya wrote for the presentation of George Washington:
George Washington
I was asked to choose three films from the hundreds that have screened over 40 years of the Berlinale Forum. But when I saw George Washington on the list I didn’t even bother choosing another two. It had to be George Washington or I wasn’t coming to this thing. That’s how much I love this movie.
I remember the first time I saw it was at the Landmark Theatre in Berkeley, California in the days when I was still a student at USC Film School. It must have been 2001. I used to go up to San Francisco a lot to visit my girlfriend and since she was working, I’d go watch movies all day. The Landmark on University Avenue was a stand alone theatre showing a different movie every day. I’d go watch the 1pm show or the 3pm show or whatever and sometimes there would be like five people sitting in this 500 seat auditorium. It was great. That’s how I watched George Washington.
What do I love about this movie? It’s hard to say. But that’s not a bad thing. And it’s not necessary to go find out either. In fact, “It’s hard to say” might even be the best reason to love a movie. Or in other words, it’s the highest compliment you can give. Because when you do know, it kind of loses something. Mystery is so hard to achieve in movies. I mean, even with complete freedom, discounting for a moment the realities of making a film in an industry, it’s very hard to achieve genuine mystery and not its twin cousins, confusion and boredom.
For sure I love other movies too for the usual reasons. I can always watch Yi-Yi. It’s warm and gentle and the bond of family is so moving. Same too for The Godfather - the bond of family is very dramatic and moving. Recently I liked There Will be Blood a lot. I like it’s portrayal of a time when life was hard and the sun was hot and you worked until your nails bled. And it’s also about family. (I guess I like movies about family. I didn’t realize this until just now writing this paragraph). Anyway, the point is some movies are a little easier to explain.
But getting back to George Washington, I’ll try to explain anyway because I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to do. First, I love the images. They’re very warm and gentle. And I guess in a way, the film is also about family. Except this one’s a big family, an entire town: grown-ups and kids and dogs and squirrels and some old guy dressed up as Uncle Sam on the 4th of July. I like that everyone seems to be equal. They all seem to be equally adult…or equally children. And I like that the things they say aren’t exactly realistic. It’s more poetic. But you believe it.
What else? I like the kid (George) throwing the suitcase full of water in the opening sequence. I also like his uncle, the crazy guy who drools when he chops wood. My girlfriend says I’m probably the only guy in the world who quotes lines from George Washington. I always say, “What you got your panties on for?” in the voice of that crazy uncle. I also like the monologue by the fat kid near the end which is one of the best kid-acting jobs I’ve ever seen. Especially when he says “I wish I had my own tropical island, I wish I could go to China, I wish I could stay home and brainstorm all day”. What the hell does that mean? I don’t know.
Oh, and finally, since I’m going through scenes from memory, I might as well say that this film contains the one single scene that I’ve watched more often than any other. It’s the part where George goes to visit his dad in prison. The music is beautiful. And the images are beautiful. And the things he says are beautiful. He says “I love you” and it might be the most moving use of those three words ever put on film. I’ve probably watched that scene on DVD fifty times already. Just last month I made a short film and pulled out George Washington to use as a reference for my cinematographer. So I watched it again. And yesterday my editor asked to borrow it because he’s cutting somebody’s non-linear film. He’s heard me talk about it forever and he’s never seen it.
Non-linear, maybe that’s it. It’s a term that’s overused nowadays but it is correct I suppose. George Washington is definitely non-linear. In a way, it’s just a series of scenes stuck together. I’d guess that when David Gordon Green wrote the script, it was probably kind of linear, with a clear plot movement - because you can still see remnants of it in there. But it’s just not all that important. It’s been overshadowed by all the other stuff. It makes me wonder whether you can actually write a movie like George Washington. Can it be planned out, like in a script? I doubt it. I don’t want to call it an accident, but in a way, it seems that some films do go from good to great because of unplanned, unforeseen events.
Some artist, I think it was Picasso, said “I do not seek, I find”. That’s the same thing right? I can imagine that David Green probably wrote a script, started filming it, and in the process found other things that were better and more original than what he wrote. And he had the courage to say “f**k the script, I’m going to shoot all this other stuff instead.” Because I don’t think you can actually write a scene of a kid throwing a suitcase of water until the day of filming and you see that suitcase full of rainwater sitting there. And you can’t write lines like “I wish I could stay home and brainstorm all day” until the fat kid gets melancholy, sad about whatever it is he’s sad about, and says it.
If that’s true, isn’t it unfortunate that we work in an art form that hardly allows for these sorts of accidents? It’s also called improvisation. Musicians do it all the time. It’s how they create music. Painters do it all the time too. They just put paint to canvas and start moving their hand around. And of course writers even more so - Pauline Kael once said she wrote with her hand more than her brain. But the reality is that filmmakers work in an art form that is too carefully planned – because it’s the most commercial art form of all. It’s no wonder that George Washington is a first film. It would be really hard to convince any company to invest in a film without any planning. And that sucks.
David Gordon Green has gone on to make other good films, but in my opinion, George Washington is still his best. This is no judgment of his career, nor do I care to get into the art versus commerce shit. I simply state my opinion to pose the question of whether too much planning can be bad for a film. I’m also a filmmaker. And I’m a real coward. I make my plans and hold on to them like a life raft in a sea storm. Sometimes I’m on set and even though I have a feeling that something isn’t right about the scene I’m shooting…I’ll shoot it anyway. Why? Because I’m running out of time, this rented camera is expensive, and I better just stick to the safe side.
Some people would argue that every art form has its own particular characteristics and filmmaking just happens to need a lot of planning. And if you want to be a filmmaker, you have to accept that. No doubt, they have a point. After all, you can’t just freely improvise in architecture either. But nevertheless I do wish for the freedom of writing, where you can just erase the bad stuff, or write three different endings, or when nothing else works, just throw the whole paper in the trash and start over. I think this is a feeling shared by many filmmakers around the world. The camera weighs the same everywhere, and everywhere it’s heavy.
Good news though, is that times are changing. I work in Thailand, and I know in Thailand and the rest of South-East Asia, everyone’s shooting on video. It’s DV or if you have a little more money, HD and Red Camera. We do it because it’s cheaper. This is the immediate benefit, but I think in the long-term the tools will change the nature of the content. Now you’re starting to see more diary films, one-take films, 10 hour films, things that would not have been possible before. Finally, we are starting to use the camera with the freedom of the pen. For sure, we are just at the beginning. We are asking questions, not providing answers.
I hope that there will be more films like George Washington, work that is not planned but found. Personally, I agree with whoever it was that said film is most closely related to poetry. I think we are moving in that direction.
Aditya Assarat
Bangkok, Thailand
May 23, 2009
General News
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