Gerry

365 Films

Entry #66

Gerry (2003)

Directed by Gus Van Sant

There was a time in this country, before the rise of the millions of film news aggregate sites that seem to be popping up every five seconds, when you could go into a movie completely cold.  It’s common these days that before being inundated with set photos and scripts leaks, movie fans can be alerted to the very moment a movie is greenlit by a studio.  Friends of mine will tell me that the answer to this is to simply stop reading these sites, but alas, I am weak and stupid.  Besides, an astute film watcher will simply shut out all this white noise and judge the work simply from an instinctual, moment to moment criteria.  The only thing that matters is the film is front of you.  Such a state of mind is ideal, but I would be lying if I said that frequently happens.  With the proliferation of behind the scenes material spreading to every crevice of the internet (it’s practically a third arm of the film industry), sometimes one’s mind can be made up before ever setting foot into the theater.  It’s a sad state of affairs to be sure, but it also makes the films that sneak up and surprise that much more valuable.  Gus Van Sant’s Gerry was one of those films.  Coming off the back-to-back misfires of Psycho and Finding Forrester (you all know my thoughts on Psycho and I think Forrester definitely has its merits) Van Sant set about construction of his death trilogy.  The first entry, Gerry concerns death when delivered by a close friend in the form of a two guys-gets-lost-on-a-hike-buddy picture.  As I recall, the film gained some considerable traction after a few successful festival premieres, but the primary interest in the film came from the presence of genuine movie star Matt Damon and Casey Affleck (brother of a genuine movie star).  It was almost as if Gus Van Sant and his actors disappeared into the middle of nowhere and came back with a movie about which, very few people knew anything.  I was certainly one of those ignorant fools and I was all the better for it.  My brother and I saw the film at the 2^nd avenue theater in Manhattan and while that theater has a few nice screening rooms, a couple of them resemble a tiny windowless box more than anything else.  I don’t recall any problems with the audio or visual components of the place so I don’t mean to cast aspersions, but it was definitely a different kind of movie palace than what I was used to.  Gerry was in one of the tiny theaters and for some reason it’s an experience I’ll never forget.  I think it’s because I literally had no idea what to expect and when you go in like that, it is that much easier to be transported.  To be fair, the film does a pretty good job of that with its stark, minimalistic compositions that seem to pack the frame with everything terrifying and beautiful about the natural landscape.  Arvo Part’s music is the perfect compliment to the images (now a worn-out indie cliché) in that it serves as a metronome for the funeral procession to which, the film seems to be heading.  Sitting in that theater with so little of the outside world to distract us, Gerry became something more akin to an out of body sensation.  Everything about the experience was foreign to me, beginning with Van Sant’s stubborn refusal to obey any laws of mainstream cinematic story telling.  The film simply casts a spell on the willing observer and once it’s got that hold on you, it is damn near impossible to shake.  Gerry is a reminder to me that sometimes the best way to experience a film is to shut your eyes (not literally) and take the leap.  Allow the film to happen to you rather than conforming to whatever arbitrary rules you have imposed upon it.