Van Sant Walks the Walk, Forgets Talk in Gerry
By Chris Meyer
A&F Associate

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck ride silently in their browning jalopy along twisting roads stretching away from civilization and further into the desolate Arizona wilderness. After some minutes they pull over near a sign reading "nature trail," get out and walk briskly into the desert without saying a word. Only later, around 15 minutes after we first see them, are the first words actually spoken. "Hey, Gerry, the path," Matt Damon mumbles offhandedly; the silence then continues for several minutes.

This is more or less the way events play out in Gerry, the new film from Gus Van Sant, who you may remember from other Matt Damon projects such as Good Will Hunting and Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season. Gerry, however, has little in common with the bulk of either Damon's or Van Sant's résumés: Damon and Affleck have the only real roles in the film, which follows them as they hike out into the wilderness, lose their sense of direction, and spend days trying to find their way home. The film travels approximately at the speed of rust: single shots often last ten minutes or more, and these are often punctuated only by the crunching of the duo's Timberlands on the sand or the hollow rasping of an unforgiving wind. Gerry deals lightly in character development, as well - when the characters do speak, very little of their dialogue illuminates their personalities. The audience does not learn why they came to the desert, what they hope to do when they get home, or any of the other requisite niceties one would expect from a story of this kind. The characters never even divulge their names; they simply call each other "Gerry," a term they use about as liberally as a college student might use "fuck."

Given these limitations, why should anyone bother watching Gerry? It's not your typical American film fare, certainly. It's not even your typical American independent film fare. But that's partly what makes Gerry so unique in this day and age. Van Sant purposefully does away with standard narrative convention and produces instead a piece of work that is significant in what it shows, not what it tells. From the beginning Gerry's visuals are absolutely striking-the film has already been lauded by some critics as having the best cinematography in the last 20 years of American film, and though I haven't seen every film released since 1982, I'm inclined to agree. The shots are as simple as they are beautiful, begging the question of why more filmmakers don't try a similar approach. One of the most memorable scenes begins in interminable grey, with two darker silhouettes shifting back and forth. The scene gradually lightens, and after a few minutes it becomes clearer that the camera is following Damon and Affleck as they saunter along the cracked floor of the plains. The effect as the dawning sun slowly peeks above the mountain range is deceptively gorgeous.

It's a huge credit to Van Sant and his cinematographer, Harris Savides, that Gerry is so vacuous and slowly paced, yet very rarely bores an attentive audience. Like other minimalist works, the relatively low level of action forces viewers to begin examining the film in greater detail; where in other movies the audience would be wondering how one spy is going to double-cross another or how a villain will enact his plan for world domination, here we find ourselves noticing Damon's deepening sunburns or the fact that, after days without water, the parched comrades don't even swallow anymore as they make what little conversation they can.

Though dialogue is scarce, what the film does give us is strangely satisfying. The delivery is for the most part spot-on, as both actors - Affleck in particular - deliver convincing portrayals of regular Joes (or Gerrys) that end up in an unplanned situation. So many rumors have been floating around regarding Gerry's script - that it was all improvised, that none of it was improvised, that an angry Van Sant threw the first draft into a fire and later rescued half of it and shot with what was left - that it's now almost pointless to try to separate fact from fiction. What's there feels incredibly real, and not at all forced to fit a theme or motif that the director is trying to include. There is something of an undercurrent of masculinity that becomes important near the film's conclusion, and Affleck's lamenting of his fallen empire within a computer game illustrates how seemingly inconsequential facets of nature can have the most serious consequences on human existence.

The film begins innocently enough as Affleck and Damon romp through the wilderness on an unplanned adventure, but grows fatally serious as days without water grind the two almost to a halt, crawling across the land toward a destination that may or may not exist. Van Sant pulls off both sides of the tale admirably, and the results form the most unique movie so far this year, if not of the last several years. Viewers looking for such an experience owe it to themselves to check out Gerry before it vanishes from the art houses like a desert mirage.