It is often said that film judgment is individual and evolving. That it is hinged on outside influences, such as politics, age, or personal situation. People will even go as far as critiquing films based on "how they felt that day". While I feel that in most circumstances this attitude is a disservice to the filmmaker as an artist (as isn't it an artists' job to invest you in their art, no matter its genre or your place in life?), my recent viewing of David Gordon Green's All the Real Girls lends some credence to this theory for me personally. Without delving into (and therefore boring you) a Harry Knowles-esque, arbitrary and masturbatory rundown of my personal life, I will say that this film's emotional impact on me after one viewing (and the sequential viewings I've had since) was uttery devastating, and something I've never experienced before in quite this way.

I've made my love of Gordon Green's masterpiece George Washington abundantly clear in this very blog, so when I say that I consider All the Real Girls to be the better film, the weight of that statement should not be in doubt. Where as George Washington was every bit an art film and therefore rather laborious in its payoff and search for meaning, All the Real Girls has a much more clear, concise target for Gordon Green's gorgeous and brilliant filmmaking - young love/first love.

In narrowing his range, Gordon Green is able to focus his immense skill on one lone theme, and the results are positively heartbreaking. Made with a total lack of the cynicism and irony that one would typically find in a film of this nature, All the Real Girls dives head first into the earnestness, sentimentality, and resilience of love, particularly young love. And this is why All the Real Girls is the single most deft portrayal of this fairly common theme I've ever seen in any art medium, let alone film. When the character of Noel (portrayed with searing intensity by Zooey Deschanel) delivers lines such as "I miss your face", we believe it - and it hurts - because we've experienced this type of clumsy, inarticulate, but truly deep love before. And when Paul Schneider's Paul character feels the true and devastating break of his heart for the first time, we feel it with him, because we've been there before.

A thread that is unique to this film (at least in my experience), and possibly the thread that ties it all together, is the reality that once a love between two people is formed, it is inerasable and will forever bond the two, whether they are together in a relationship, merely friends, or a million miles away, both physically and mentally. When Noel tells an emotionally crippled Paul that she simply will not allow Paul to hate her because of her actions, it's not a pathetic attempt at some form of self-justification, but instead a brutally honest admittal that the love she has for Paul will never fade away, and she needs him in her life in some form, even if it's just the knowledge that they had, and still have, something special. This is what lends All the Real Girls its glimmer of hope at the end. Not of hope that these star-crossed lovers will reunite their relationship as it was, but of hope that a love between two people, no matter how much self-destruction and pain it caused, can continue to live on and enrich our lives in some way - whether it's through fond (not angry or bitter) memories or actual daily interaction. Gordon Green occasionally allows his sights to move to other relationships and people sprinkled throughout the film, and they all hold this same truth in them. This lends the film a level of depth generally unheard of in this type of film.

It is trite and monotonous to mention the artistry on display in this film considering George Washington, but it is just as hauntingly beautiful and lyrical as the aforementioned film. Gordon Green's lens captures the beauty inherent in his film's surroundings almost as well as his hero Terrence Malick, and that is saying something. The images on screen are once again accompanied by a simplistic, beautiful score, and are edited with a deceivingly leisure pace. Suffice to say, All the Real Girls is a gorgeous film.

This review my seem overly sentimental to some, but some would also say the same about the film it's discussing, and frankly I can't imagine better company to be in.

Pineapple Express was better.

Seriously.