If you go to the movies today, you are usually looking to have to endure 150 minutes of flashy, overbudget, effects-heavy gimmicks produced by the Hollywood machine. This unpleasant experience extends even to “groundbreaking” movies, like those made by the Mexican new-wavers Inarritu, Cuaron and Del Toro, all vying for 2006 Oscars. Yes, they all have interesting stories to tell, leave you with things to think about, and moments that take your breath away, but after a while you really start longing for the simple tale told well that perfectly describes something about a human condition without beating you over the head.

So it was that I was recently knocked out by two very different fables made in 2003, one from each side of the Atlantic: Ricky Gervais’ “The Office” and David Gordon Green’s “All the Real Girls”. As Robert Altman proved in his most compelling works, the effect of an ensemble cast is so much greater than that of an individual or couple, and both these stories (even though they are made to appeal to completely different audiences, and use different techniques) explore what happens when you observe the give and take of a group of strangers (in the case of “The Office”) or long-time friends (”Real Girls”) as life goes on. Meantime the viewer is inexorably drawn in, reflecting on one’s own experiences.

For once, listening to the “extra features” on the DVDs of these two pieces does reveal something about why they are both so effective. They are labors of love, not made to make box office records (surprisingly, “The Office” did become a huge success), but because the film-makers were smart enough to stay small.

Gervais and his co-creator Stephen Merchant (mentalist!) found a way to channel Gervais’ obsessive need to entertain and place it within the drab, low-cost setting of our everyday work lives. With brilliant casting and exquisite art direction (probably the most striking aspect of the show to me was the perfect framing of the office location shots–made to look haphazard, there is always a dead plant in the corner or a monkey on the coat-rack just out of focus), Gervais and Merchant wear us down so that we must emphasize even with the boss from hell.


Green’s ensemble is composed of film school friends from the North Carolina School of the Arts, and as he and lead actor Paul Schneider explain on the commentary, they approach every scene in “All the Real Girls” with an open mind. You can believe from the gentle way that the film unwinds that comments and ideas from the guy holding the mic boom were accepted by the cast and director, and that just as in Gervais’ case, they were not going to settle for anything other than the best they could do. Zooey Deschanel rises to the occasion (when she wants to, she can give us incredibly powerful performances–see also “The Good Girl”) and the other actors win us over.