All The Real Girls

365 Films

Entry # 155

All The Real Girls (2003)

Directed by David Gordon Green

In honor of my brother’s birthday today, it seemed only fitting to pick a film that he holds as near and dear as I do.  All The Real Girls is a difficult film for me to summarize, much less perform any kind of critical analysis on its filmmaking techniques.  So ingrained are some of the moments into my own memories not just of the time when I first saw it, but also images from my own life, that it seems trivial to even attempt any kind of objective distance.  Therefore, I will cop-out with my usual sentiment of suggesting that if you are not familiar with All The Real Girls that you drop everything and go see it no matter how inconvenient it is for you to do so and make up your own mind.  The best I can do, and how I will attempt to tie this all into a celebration of Nate’s birthday is explain the context and story behind why this film has become so important to the both of us.  It was a frigid February weeknight back in 2003 (at least I think it was a weeknight, Nate feel free to correct if I am wrong).  I was in the second semester of my freshman year at NYU and Nate was just a few months away from wrapping up his four year stint at NYU as well.  A bit of back-story for the back-story, as a freshman at the NYU film program (back then at least) did not involve any actual filmmaking.  You take a bunch of introductory classes and don’t get your hands on a physical film camera until the following year.  The importance of this is that I was not yet equipped with the experience of being in the “shit” at NYU, Nate had been fully immersed in it for the past three years.  Without getting into any specifics, mainly because that’s Nate’s story to tell and I do not wish to dredge up any unpleasant memories in too much sordid detail, Nate was a little frustrated with the creative progress he was making at that particular moment in his college education.  The reason I bring this all up is because he knew little to nothing about the film All The Real Girls before we sauntered into the basement of the Angelika that night to see it.  I knew very little about it as well except for the fact that the film’s director, David Gordon Green, had previously made George Washington a film for which my deep and everlasting love has already been well documented on this site.   That name being listed in the credits was reason enough for me to check out anything regardless of the content (an edict that would come back to bite me in the ass a few years later with a few of Mr. Green’s films).  I remember Nate was hesitant and I don’t think he had yet seen George Washington, but he was not entirely sold on this based on the usual marketing materials.  He was interested for sure, otherwise he just wouldn’t have gone, but to say he went in wanting to love it would be an overstatement.  The reason I’m attempting to catalogue these seemingly innocuous details is because collectively, they make his reaction to the film afterwards all the more joyous.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen my brother react to a film so instantaneously the way he did for All The Real Girls.  It was as if the film gave him a dozen shots of pure creative adrenaline, which subsequently gave him a sense of clarity in regards to the creative struggles he was having with school at that time.  I just remember walking back to our dorms in Union Square and Nate was almost unable to stop talking about what he had just seen.  People sometimes (myself included) describe the primary pleasures to be taken from watching a movie as those of the escapist variety.  You watch a movie to be transported “somewhere else” and flee the boring reality of day-to-day existence.  Movies like All The Real Girls spin that very notion on its head and in fact, offer the exact opposite.  The feeling Nate and I had that night was one of personal engagement with the larger world; we felt a pure sense of connection with not only the film and its creators but also the fact that we lived in a universe where such a film could be made in the first place.  As absolutely eye-roll worthy as it sounds, this film gave us both a collective sense of hope.  When you hear the stories about films that changed people’s lives on first viewing, they are usually associated with epics or large scale pieces that offer a “game-changing” approach towards technique and craft.  Not to diminish that sentiment and surely I’ve experienced that with those films as well.  But there is something to be said for the films that seem to be made just and only for you.  There is something to be said for the fact that even the most restrained releases of films solely being shown in sparsely crowded, subterranean cinematic pits such as the Angelika still offer us the chance to step back out into the world feeling as if we’ve just witnessed something remarkable.  Even to this day, All The Real Girls fails to retain the qualities it needs in order to be a lifeless object to me.  It grows with me and each viewing offers the chance to be opened up to a new sense of understanding with the purity of its cinematic sincerity.   It is not something to be necessarily studied or poured over detail by detail (the film is certainly dense enough for that, I just don’t have the ability to do it).  It’s more like checking in with an old friend that you haven’t seen in a very long time.  You laugh at the same goofy moments and marvel at the emotional understandings you still share after all this time.  Personally, I think there’s something else going on in my mind every time I sit down to watch this film, a feeling that perhaps lords over even the very specificity of the film itself.  Even ten years later, I can’t help but be reminded of the look on Nate’s face and the passion in his voice when he spoke that night about a film that truly and deeply moved him.  It’s a beautiful thing to witness a piece of art lift someone up like that, perhaps even more so when it is someone for whom you happen to care a great deal.  And that person in turn, imbues the film with a sense of life that will last far beyond its run in the theaters.  I don’t want to speak for Nate on this, but I know that for myself, if I ever forget why this field is worth pursuing in the first place, I simply think of that film and that night. 

Happy Birthday Nate.