GERRY
(Madman Entertainment)
Director Gus Van Sant clearly experienced an epiphany after making the turgid coming-of-age melodrama Finding Forrester (2000). After - presumably - contemplating his recent oeuvre in comparison to such uncompromising works as Mala Noche (1985) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989), Van Sant wrote and directed, in quick succession, two of the most hauntingly beautiful and non-commercial films to have originated from the USA in recent years: the Palme d’Or-winning Elephant, released in 2003, and its immediate precursor, 2002’s Gerry.
Make no mistake: this is a movie that many people will deride as pretentious and unbearably stilted. Even hardened cinephiles may find it witless, trite and painfully slow. Personally I believe it to be one of the masterpieces of contemporary film-making. Bear with me while I explain why.
Cinema is a visual language. All too often, dialogue is used for exposition, with clumsy film-makers telling us what is happening instead of showing it to us. In Gerry, Van Sant (together with co-writers and leads Casey Affleck and Matt Damon) relies on the visual narrative to convey not only the plot, but the overwhelming helplessness of the film’s main characters, both called Gerry, who within a short space of the languid opening sequence are lost in a desert without food or water. Thereafter they wander helplessly, communicating with each other in stilted, comical phrases (perhaps representing the loss of contemporary cinema’s ability to speak at any other level than the most trite) while slowly dying of starvation and dehydration.
Whether this thin plot is a parable about humanity’s relationship with the fragile planet we dwell upon, or an opportunity to explore a non-sexual relationship between two men without relying on the cliches of the ‘buddy movie’ is largely irrelevant. What we are forced to ponder while watching Gerry, with its almost painfully long takes that transpose the mundane with the sublime, is the way so many recent films rely on forced drama, artifice and preposterous narrative; the way they seek to entertain us with spectacle rather than try to move or enthral us by telling a passionate and thought-provoking story.
At every level, Gerry is a work of sublime beauty that bespeaks a mastery of cinematic language, and hints at an elusive hunt for meaning. Whether this movie will bore you or enthral you I cannot say. I can guarantee that it will stir a passionate and extreme reaction in anyone who watches it, which perhaps was Van Sant’s purpose, in the face of films which only aspire to help sell merchandise or placed products, and little more.
Sadly, DVD extras on Gerry are as minimal as the movie itself. The trailer, a filmography and biography of Van Sant, and a brief, unilluminating ‘featurette’ of the shooting of one of the film’s most poignant and beautiful sequences, are all we are offered. Thankfully the film-to-DVD and sound transfer are crisp and clean, maintaining the haunting images and soundtrack of this beguiling, maddening cinematic experience.
RICHARD WATTS
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