Movie Review: 'Prince Avalance' -- 3 stars

David Gordon Green leaves the world of broad Hollywood comedies behind and returns to his indie roots in “Prince Avalanche,” a small-scale two-hander starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch.

It’s a welcome return to form for a filmmaker who shot to prominence with lyrical fare such as “All the Real Girls” before veering into the mainstream with everything from “Pineapple Express” to the debacle “Your Highness.”

Rudd plays Alvin, a highway worker spending the summer of 1988 repairing an empty stretch of highway in a forest destroyed by a Texas wildfire alongside his girlfriend’s brother Lance (Emile Hirsch). Alvin is uptight and Lance epitomizes the dopey slacker. On the surface, there isn’t much more to the movie than that.

But “Prince Avalanche” unfolds in the quiet moments, with the important drama filling the silences that come with such an isolating pursuit. It’s a meditation on the human inclination to flee difficulties, to escape into the woods and live free of pain and heartbreak.

With its still, observational camera and allusions to Thoreau and other naturalists, the movie is ultimately a portrait of the pleasures and burdens of solitude in the wilderness.

“There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone,” Alvin says while extolling the virtues of life in nature. It’s the genius of Rudd’s sad, tender performance that you can see he’s not sure if he believes it.