Gerry (2002)

 I'll never get those 103 minutes back
...and for this alone Gus Van Sant will not again darken a screen in my life. A waste of film, a waste of breath, a waste of desert. March 24, 2008

 gerrry
i wonder if this film was dedicated to jerry seinfeld. a film completely about nothing. hard to believe a film from a major studio released this. but, it is a great surreal film about being lost. many different things ran through my mind watching this. a great film to meditate to or fall asleep to. February 16, 2008

 Nothing more than an Andy Warhol vanity trip for Affleck and Damon...
I give GERRY one star for the desert scenery and cloud formations. It's absolutely mystifying why anyone bothered to film GERRY, since the script has them uttering about ten words in the course of one hour and forty-three minutes, including the "f" word, which doesn't exactly show they had an IQ even approaching normal.

MATT DAMON and CASEY AFFLECK get out of their car and hike through the desert. That's the plot. We see endless close-ups of Damon and Affleck as they trudge in silence across sunlit landscapes, breathing hard, walking fast at the start, even playfully running before they realize they're lost. Fatigue soon sets in and we're treated to more close-ups and long shots of the two men as they trudge endlessly through barren desert without uttering more than a few words.

The story really has no resolution and what motivates Damon to put an end to Affleck in a sudden burst of energy is never probed or even hinted at. The final scene has Damon discovering a highway and riding off in a car. The End.

Nothing about the film could ever induce me to watch it again. It's almost as if the ghost of Andy Warhol is hanging over every foot of film, composed so often of endless shots of two men walking, walking and walking with nothing else in the frame but two solitary figures.

Hardly conjures up anything deep. My verdict: An attempt at artistry is a total bore and a pretentious one at that.

It does nothing to advance the career reputations of Damon, Affleck or Gus Van Sant who directed this stark, boring mirage. January 19, 2008

 The Bourne Ultimatum meets Gone, Baby Gone!
A secret agent has lost his memory, and is lost in the desert without food and water, but nothing will keep him from saving the crack baby who was abducted and adopted by the head of the C.I.A. Non stop action meets moral conundrums in this fast paced thriller.

Well, not exactly ... but at least we have Matt Damon meets Casey Affleck in a stunningly gorgeous but darkly enigmatic existential wander piece. Two guys named Gerry drive out to the desert for a hike, get lost and wander into the wastelands without water or food or any clear sense of who they are. Are they the same person? Is this an allegory about getting lost, torn between identities, finding oneself compelled to choose? Is there significance to the fact that Gerry (Damon) ends up wearing a nomad's turban and Gerry (Affleck) wears a gold star pinned to his shirt? why does Gerry (Affleck) explain to Gerry (Damon) how he sacked Thebes and then got his own army wasted for not having enough horses? are they classics students and is this a game they're playing or is the filmmaker aiming to make this contemporary story timeless with classical allusions? what is their relationship -- are they brothers, friends, associates, lovers? Is it important that they not only call each other Gerry, but use "gerry" as a verb which seems to mean things like "turning around", "messing up", "doing something" -- as in "we gerry'd off towards the animal tracks"? I don't know and it's hard to say. What I like about the enigmas in this film is that (in spite of the minimalist simplicity that pervades the film) there are so many of them and while it would be easy to ascribe symbolic and allegorical meaning to many aspects of the story, it would be hard to come up with a story that makes sense of everything. One could equally say: "this story has no meaning," and "it is oversaturated with meanings."

That leads me to think that the "point" of the film is not to "mean something." Meaning is overrated, making sense is not the only thing a film can do. Even where I can't pin down a satisfying interpretation to this film as a whole (which is not to say I don't have several ideas about what it might mean) I can definitely say it is full of feeling and beauty. Tension, foreboding, confusion, levity, ennui, anger, celebration, humor, are all present in this film -- at least for the viewer who has the patience and good sense to dispense with the effort to make it all mean something. There are some stunning and even shocking scenes here: I was jolted by a scene in the desert where the Gerrys are walking along a sand dune just at dawn. In the darkness you could only see their heads bobbing on the horizon that separates sky from sand, and they appeared to be walking towards the audience; slowly, imperceptably, as the sky brightened and the sand began to pick up light something didn't seem quite right, until suddenly it was clear that they were walking the opposite direction, away from the camera. Directions become meaningless; the desert topology intermingles with the landscapes of dream and memory. Not since Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana has the desert and its perceptual mystery been captured with such intensity.

This is, really, an experimental film -- and a brilliant one -- of the kind that rarely appears in theaters and much more often in museum installations: compare this with Andy Warhol's 12 hour long Empire (which features the Empire State Building over a 12 hour period) or his Sleep (featuring Warhol's lover sleeping over a period of five hours) and this film begins to look like "Speed". Gus van Sant's stroke of brilliance is to make an experimental film with movie stars, so that it would actually be seen by a decent-sized audience. It really deserves to be seen, even though it will bore many to tears, because it holds a number of surprises and mysteries and beauties -- some of the most enigmatic and powerful images of nature I've seen in film -- for those who have the patience. For those who don't ... you can't say you haven't been warned. January 12, 2008

 lots to consider
I liked the film. This isn't a film for the action lover. It is a study in subtleties. It is up to the viewer to draw their own conclusions. There is much to glean about male friendship and the lack of verbal communication even in the face of survival. Having lived in the desert and understanding "how this could happen" I thought it confusing how they moved from desert to desert (the plant life varied to much to be say the sonoran or mojave) The other thing that bothered me was how 'good' they looked through their ordeal...but this wasn't the point of the film. The point was about relationship and movement deeper and deeper into hopelessness. There was an urgency yet a calmness. Very little drama between the two 'Gerry's'. This is a worthy film, the requires a quiet mind and patience to appreciate the very subtle nuances. Visually this is a work of art. The panoramic views starred and the characters were the subplot. That is just the way the unforgiving desert is. January 9, 2008

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