Movies - Gerry

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Gerry is a 2002 film directed by Gus Van Sant starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck.

The film received widely diverse reactions, from contempt to lavish praise, as it made its way through the film festival circuit and the few theaters to which it was released. Reviewers agree that it marks a returning point in Van Sant's film-making, away from commercially oriented film, and back to his earlier experimentalism. Van Sant dispenses with narrative and conventional dialogue, and instead attempts to tell the tale by establishing the mood and tempo of the characters, using lengthy real-time single-camera scenes, threaded together by aimless speeches, the sound closely focused on the rhythm of their breathing and their thumping steps, the camera following their bobbing heads or panning back to reveal a backdrop of surrealistically austere landscapes, to craft a feeling which is offered for the audience to react to. The film was greatly influenced by the Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr (who receives special thanks in the credits), whose later day films Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies use the same kind of long tracking shots and long takes that are used in this film. Whether this method of scene-making succeeds in creating an experience of frustration and aimlessness, or is simply frustrating and aimless, is the point of departure for many reviewers. Many found this an interesting experiment, others said that Van Sant copied Bela Tarr's style, but failed to capture his substance. The way that the film is made stands in the foreground of reviews, becoming the subject, rather than the parable-like fragment of a story which the film concerns.

Insofar as it is a story, Gerry is about two driving companions, both called Gerry. (The term "Gerry" comes from slang used by Damon and Ben and Casey Affleck meaning "screw up." The term is used several times in the film as a verb or adjective and not a proper noun. Van Sant revealed interviews that Damon and Affeck used the term before the movie had even been named.) The characters are apparently on a hike to view a "thing" at the end of a wilderness trail, but after some walking and a short foot race they agree on their mutual disinterest in the site and decide to turn around. They soon realize that they are lost in the desert. The camera and the sound walk with them, from one absurd scene to another, as the two men stagger toward despair.

After several days of wandering around mostly in silence, both protagonists collapse due to fatigue and dehydration. The weaker of the two (Affleck) proclaims that he is going to "leave". Whereupon, Damon struggles on top of Affleck, dispassionately strangling him to death. After some time, he's awakened by the sound of an engine rises to his feet to move on. Walking only a few hundred yards or so, he discovers a busy highway on the horizon. Gerry catches a ride with a family, whom he watches in awkward silence.

The soundtrack is a sparse composition of tones, by Arvo Pärt.

The film is dedicated to the memory of Ken Kesey.

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Movies - Gerry

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