FILM REVIEW: GERRY (2002) Two friends (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) are hiking out to the thing. Matt doesnt want to take the main trail. Its just going to be tourists up there. Besides, everything leads to the thing, so they can just loop around to the thing. They take off, but they lose the path, and cant find their way back. They separate to see what they can see on different hilltops, and if they dont see anything promising, theyll meet back at the spot. They do meet up, but its not at the spot. They keep walking. They might follow the animal tracks. That would take them to water--either water or the mating ground. Trying to establish the direction theyve come, they try to remember the place of the sun when things happened along the way. They head out north. They walk. At night, they stop and sit by a fire. Before dawn, they walk again. They walk through a ravine with tumbleweeds. They walk over hills. They walk across vast barren land. ¶As the walking continues, their desperation, their frustration, their dread shows on their faces. I was drawn into that same sense of dread as I watched the film. I cared about these men, but I knew. They knew they were hopelessly lost, and I knew they were right. ¶ Before I started writing, I made the mistake of reading some other reviews. Most of them made the mistake of searching, flailing, for something beyond the simple situation of the movie itself, for some metaphor to give the film some philosophical depth. Those who look for metaphor might find one, but its not in the film. The film is not about anything other than that immediate experience of lostness extended over days to the point of exhaustion. Expect nothing. When nothing much seems to be happening, dont look for something else like some effete sophisticate. See the film itself. ¶ Director Gus Van Sant followed Gerry with Elephant and Last Days. Stylistically, they are quite similar. There are long takes. There are long stretches with no dialog. The dialog is banal and inconsequential to what little story there is. I had seen the other two. Gerry, the first of the three, is the most bleak, the most demanding. ¶ Is it worth seeing? Definitely. ¶ Will you like it? Did you like the review? Heres a scene you can try out. The DVD picture and sound (unlike the clip) are crisp and clean, so make allowances for that. Get out your earphones; the sound on the clip is too low.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 08:49:29 +0000
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