Gerry

This is not a good film.

But it's not a bad film either.

Consider the blank canvas hung in the museum. Questions arise: What is this? Why is this here? Who did this? Why did they do this? And most importantly, do I care about this?

These are the type of questions you will be left with after seeing `Gerry.'

The film is painfully slow to watch, the dialogue unrewarding, the landscape more interesting than the cinematography, the characters undefined, and the plot full of holes.

And yet, the film sticks with you and makes you think... just as the blank canvas does.

After leaving the theater, you truly contemplate the strange trip you just took through the middle of nowhere while you draw parallels to your own adventures.

And for these reasons the journey is worthwhile... the film, worth seeing.

Two friends (both called Gerry) take a drive out into the New Mexico wilderness to go and see the thing. Following the trail they assume will lead them right there they eventually decide they are not going to find it and decide to head back to their car. However they have been blindly hiking for hours and before long they realise that they are lost. Sleeping rough that night, they continue their trek across the desert in search of a way out, putting their friendship under stress with every passing hour.

Perhaps this is one of those like it or hate it type movies but I do dislike the way that those that love it feel the need to lash out at those that don't, claiming that they are perhaps stupid or hollow people for not getting the beauty of this movie. Personally I do slightly suspect that the viewers who fall over themselves to love this film have never really seen many films that compare and perhaps mistake being different and non-multiplex as being the same as having depth. That the film is minimalistic and different is not in question but there is no substance to this film other than what the viewer forces into their own experience of it.

Having said that the film is still hauntingly beautiful to watch. The desert landscapes are impressive and really well captured – what a shame that you do not go to the cinema just to stare at landscapes. The cast of two have nothing to do but, as they are also responsible for the concept then they have nobody else to really blame. Affleck and Damon stumble around the place vaguely improvising but they have nothing about them; most of the time I found them an intrusion in front of the landscapes that were of much more interest.

Overall then a beautiful but empty film. The landscapes are haunting but I could not find any of this beauty in the material (such as it was). Those desperately seeking something deep will find it, but that is different from the film actually having depth.

I was curious about this film, but totally unprepared for how much it affected me. GERRY worked, for me, on many different levels. In some ways, it felt like a horror film, but without any supernatural element. Two men get lost. That's the premise, and the movie takes its time to really explore what it feels like to suddenly have no idea where you are. As the film went on, something about it began to feel abstract, as if the film wasn't just about being lost physically, but about what it feels like to feel alone in the universe. I don't mean that to sound flighty or pretentious, but the film gradually moves into a state of deep sadness that is hard to describe. I'm sure (from the looks of some of the particularly angry comments some people have posted) that this film won't be appreciated by everyone who sees it. Some may find it dull. I found it completely absorbing, and unlike anything I'd ever seen.

(By the way, if you don't like a film, that's fine. But some of the ANGER displayed below is completely unjustified, and perhaps a sign of some deeper trauma that has nothing to do with the movie you didn't like.)

I have spent a lot of time in the desert and I think what Gus Van Sant was trying to portray (and maybe not very effectively) is that space/time warp you experience when you find yourself in a place where your attention span must go from 1/2 second to a billion years, where one's sense of the passage of time becomes almost irrelevant. The human brain, especially in this age of MTV, cannot fathom the slowness of geologic change in the desert, and has trouble fathoming the change of perspective, where everything seems closer than it really is. I have "walked that walk" where the object you're heading toward keeps receding into the distance, and the tendency is to walk as the two Gerrys were walking in the slow shot of the sides of their heads, and hear nothing but the measured crunching of your footsteps. The long shot was perfectly appropriate. Maybe one has to spend time in the desert to "get it", but I thought the film was dead right-on with the music, the visuals and the pacing. I loved the film and will watch it again and probably again.

If you are looking for a Hollywood film that spoon feeds you (ultimately forgettable) entertainment don't Rent Gerry. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being spoon fed on a Friday night after an exhausting week of work or on a lazy weekend afternoon.

I knew what was up going into Gerry and I was fully prepared to shrug and say, "Sorry Gus, little too pretentious for me." But it's not. And it's not an acting exercise, not wildly entertaining, not a lot of things. What is it? It's like a slow yoga class that lasts 103 minutes. If you have no patience for that you would want to smother your vinyasa instruction with his or her yoga mat, and you would want to track down Gus Van Sant and slap him in the face.

Like a ritual, you can't judge this movie and enjoy it at the same time.

If you've ever taken a tai chi or yoga class you've probably been asked to do something like "pretend you are holding a beach ball between your hands" or "imagine there is a log jam in your mind that you have to clear one tree at a time." I think most people immediately feel like idiots doing that, but maybe 50% of us do it anyway no matter how stupid we're sure it is because we're there to learn to relax and center ourselves. And maybe it's the second month of that same yoga class and you're picturing your asinine log jam and for the first time you really feel it, like a dream, and you clear that silly image away one log at a time. And it's still silly, but it feels good. And an hour passes and you feel like you've been there for a lifetime.

Gerry is brave and patient for being painstakingly NOT impressive at first glance. Anyone familiar with Gus Van Sant's other films knows he could have made this more complex and "entertaining." The fact that he didn't spruce it up for us doesn't make this film self-indulgent.

Or maybe it does, because he had to believe, along with Matt and Casey, that there would be enough viewers with the patience to stop their busy/important lives for an hour and forty minutes to experience a very personal expression of a simple artistic idea. Maybe Van Sant was a little naive there, to expect so much of such critical people as your average Film Festival attendee. Or maybe it was worth it if just he and his two actors got to experience it themselves and see it finished and on screen. I was thankful to be in the right frame of mind to experience Gerry and all nods to the 3 talents who brought it to life.