FilmBlather.com

Gerry is a wonderful little oddity, a rich, challenging mood piece that may not cohere thematically but takes us on a compelling, unique journey. We should embrace movies like this, ones that throw convention to the wind and march to the beat of their own drum. Coming from the mind of by turns hack and brilliant auteur Gus Van Sant, Gerry is very much an experimental film; experiments like these don't always succeed, but this one beats the odds. It isn't the kind of movie I expected to like, but here we are.

I didn't expect to like it because of rampant comparisons to Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, which isn't on the list of the worst movies I've ever seen but is certainly one of my least favorite. Indeed, the two films have some elements in common, most significantly that their themes are abstruse to the point that even the directors seem to have little idea where, if anywhere, they are going with all this. The difference is that where Malick evidently took out his frustrations on the audience by pummeling it with dimestore philosophy lectures, Van Sant has actually bothered to make a real movie, with a real conflict and a bona fide, if deliberate, rhythm.

The plot is as sparse as the dialogue and the editing. Two guys, both named (or nicknamed, we're not sure) Gerry and played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, go off on a hike through the arid scenery of California's Death Valley. They leave their car behind and start walking, and walking, and walking, and pretending they know where they're going, until it dawns on them that the sand and rocks and hills and dunes have swallowed them up.

What happens next is difficult to describe because it's neither here nor there. They do not panic and desperately discuss strategy. They do not cry, and whine and moan about their misfortune. As their predicament starts to sink in, they first try to climb hills and spot the highway, then argue whether or not to follow animal tracks to water, then attempt to decipher where they started and in which direction they should head.

Gerry and Gerry have a genuinely interesting dynamic. As they banter, we realize that the word "Gerry" is used as a verb, a noun and an adjective, all in one way or another signifying a committed idiocy ("We gerry'd so-and-so"). There's an incredible, very funny one-shot sequence in which Affleck is trapped on a tall rock (how did he get up there in the first place?) and Damon tries to build a "sand-pillow" for him to land on.

Many scenes unfold entirely without dialogue and in shots that seem like they will never end. I can certainly see how some will be bored by it, but for me, Van Sant has transcended the gimmick of simply holding a shot until hell or high water. He finds beauty in simple movement, as in the now-notorious three-minute profile take of Gerry and Gerry walking side-by-side, and in visual symbolism, as in the hypnotically beautiful vision of the two of them hobbling out of darkness and into dawn. I've heard the argument that the movie is little more than a glorified travelogue starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, but, I mean, come on.

Van Sant packs the movie full of themes, from existential identity-searching to a discomforting homoerotic subtext that peeks out in the final scenes. In the end, I doubt either he or the audience can say with any degree of certainty were Gerry, Gerry and Gerry have taken us. It doesn't much matter. The movie sometimes plays like a visual trance, other times like some sort of primitive comedy, but it is always, always interesting.