Gerry (2002)

Gus Van Sant returned to his roots in experimental filmmaking with this offbeat feature, whose dialogue was entirely improvised by its two person cast. Two men named Gerry (played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) are driving through the desert regions of Death Valley, traveling towards an unknown destination. They pull over and set out on foot, presuming they're getting close to what they've come to find. Before long, Gerry and Gerry are both lost in an unforgiving desert without food, water, or other provisions, and the harder they try to find their way back to their car, they only dig themselves deeper and deeper into the desert. Gus Van Sant originally began shooting Gerry in Argentina, but was soon dissatisfied with the weather and the terrain, opting to start over in California and Utah; the film premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

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Review By Elbert Ventura

After a Hollywood detour that led to the career low that was Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant turned to European cinema and his indie roots to make Gerry, a fascinating, if flawed, return to form for the maverick filmmaker. The premise is simple: two friends named Gerry go for a hike in the Western wilderness and lose their way. That existential setup becomes the springboard for a visually stunning meditation on American expansionism and the implacability of nature, among other themes. Van Sant announces his grand ambitions early in the picture, with a long, wordless sequence following the two Gerrys as they drive down a winding desert highway to a tinkling score by Arvo Part. The rest of the movie is no less audacious. Van Sant has made no secret of the influence of Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr on Gerry. His master stroke is to transpose Tarr's rigorous, long-take aesthetic to the American West. The result is a landscape symphony of unusual power, at once elemental and stylized. As the wandering Gerrys, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are appropriately affectless. Though the sparse dialogue occasionally calls attention to its deliberate banality, the exchanges work for the most part, offering a stark counterpoint to the environment's grandeur. For all its formal brilliance, Gerry is not as profound as it thinks it is, suffering from a surfeit of underdeveloped ideas and an overdetermined ending. Considering its reach, however, the movie's flaws are forgivable. While it may not be a masterpiece, Gerry at least holds out hope that Van Sant may have found his way again.