Gerry (2002)
Spoliers Note:
How do you take a standard spoiler alert and inform
the reader that to read anything about this film before
hand is to diminish its amazing effect on the viewer.
Matt Damon and Casey Affleck lost in the desert. There.
That’s all you need to know before you see this film.
If you’ve seen some films by Warhol all the more better.
If you understand the term “Warholian ideal” even
better. If you’ve seen Kubrick’s “2001” that will
be helpful. Go. Go get an understanding of avant-garde
and underground film histories of the 60’s and of
ambient music then see “Gerry.” It will change your
life. Whatever you do. Don’t read anything about this
film until you see it.
Now, on with the review for those
who have seen the film and want to mediate upon it:
If “Koyaanisqatsi” moved at the
speed of life, then “Gerry” moves at the speed of
existence.
Anyone who has seen “Gerry” and
thinks this film is about stories or about characters
(or that it’s trying to present these sorts of things)
is an idiot. If this is you, you are invited to stop
reading now.
How do you use words to describe
a film that isn’t about words? How do you use words
to describe a film that isn’t about story? How do
you use words to describe a film that is decidedly
about film? How do you use words to describe a film
that is mainly about being human? No, not even that…
a film that is about being a sentient, breathing “being”
in the ever expanding universe with its elongating
time continually expanding, continually in flux.
Can words adequately describe a
photograph by Ansel Adams? Can words adequately describe
“Gerry?” Words will never be able to convey what an
amazing and awesome film Gus Van Sant has created
with Casey Affleck and Matt Damon. This is a film
that reinvents film. This is a film that takes everything
we’ve ever learned about film in the past 100 years
and twists in into new and exciting and amazing levels.
(Just like “2001” did). The profundity comes here
not only from the supposed story but also from the
way it is told, the characters that tell it and the
way the story is filmed. Only the film’s meditation
on existence is as important here as what Van Sant
says about film itself, as an artform. It’s awe-inspiring.
From the opening moments of the
film it is obvious that we are charting new territory.
Van Sant spends numerous minutes following a traveling
car. Our proximity, angle, direction and P.O.V. of
the car change intermittently. We are on the road
traveling into the unknown. The music is integral
to this opening continuing shot because the music
is perfection. But more about that later. What’s important
is that Van Sant sets us up from the beginning for
this amazing “ride” that is at the opposite end of
the spectrum from the standard Hollywood “Rollercoaster.”
The music is integral to this film.
Using only lumbering and gorgeous, living, breathing
pieces by Arvo Part, Van Sant creates an ethereal
neverworld of imagination for his story, his FILM,
to take place in. This music is ambient because the
film is ambient. Do you understand ambient? Get Brian
Eno’s “music for Airports” and then do all the research
you can on ambient music and then see this film. Arvo
Park’s music is like the clock that ticks slowly throughout
this film. When it is silent, it is the silent ticking
of never-ending, looping time that we are hearing.
Arvo Park’s music only elongates and exaggerates this
feeling. Time is time is time is time and “Gerry”
is quite simply about the passage of time as seen
through the eyes of a living, breathing sentient being.
We think the “story” takes place
on Earth but the film features such unusual and vast
and arid terrain that it is impossible to say for
sure that we are on planet Earth. Have our heroes
been plucked from Earth and transported into a vast
desert terrain on some far off distant planet without
their even knowing it? Wherever we are, wherever they
are, time has stopped. It moves; it breathes, and
it too can halt. Time is time is time is time. Time
is what this film says. Do you understand? Can you
possibly comprehend? Time is what this movie says.
Warholian is the ideal. And the
ideal is not only the slow, drip-drop-drip passage
of time where ennui is extended to be eeeeennnnnnnnuuuuuiiiii.
The ideal is also the beauty of the male façade. No
film has presented the exquisite beauty of the human
male form as perfectly as “Gerry” in a narrative film
since Warhol’s “Lonesome Cowboys” or Paul Morrissey’s
“Flesh.” There’s a reason that the stars of this film
are not Horatio Sans and Louie Anderson. It is absolutely
no accident that this film stars Matt Damon and Casey
Affleck. These are striking, gorgeous, modelesque
young men with well-defined features, stunning but
not perfect bodies and faces. Damon’s face is a character.
Affleck’s stature is a character. (Note that it is
the face of Damon and the cutting outline of Affleck
in the poster for the film).
Van Sant focuses on these wonderful
forms not simply because there is nothing else to
focus on in the frame but because nothing else is
worth focusing on in the frame when these breathtakingly
handsome men are on the screen. And since this film
is about the struggle of man, utilizing the standard
themes of man against nature, man against man, and
man against himself, it is very important that the
men here, representing all of humankind, be Godlike,
picturesque, captivating and stunning to behold.
This film is a gay film because
it is obviously made by a gay man. It has the visual
sensibilities of a gay man. The male physique, the
glorious beauty of the vacant and vast landscape,
as well as the enigmatic artistry of existence and
of time come to life here; these are all images that
are inherently and historically brought to the forefront
of the artistic mind by a gay sensibility.
Van Sant looks at these men from
every angle. He boldly brings us their facades in
every way imaginable. We see them in long shot, in
medium two-shots, in close-up. We see them alone and
together. We float in and out of their sphere. A particularly
wonderful sequence in the film comes when the camera
tracks the walking of Affleck and Damon in the close-up
of the sides of their faces. In the cadence of trudging
through the delirium that is existence, their magnificent
faces bob and weave in the camera’s eye, our eye.
They move in unison, then out of synch, then back
in unison again. Their expressions rarely change.
It is a magical cinematic moment, one that says everything
you need to know about humankind – and about film.
And about perception.
The characters are dressed in a
specific way as well. Not merely simply, but simply
perfect. Damon rejects any pretty boy accoutrements
for common youth fashion and wears the most unflattering
pair of slacks imaginable. He looks real - not modelesque
at all. Affleck, meanwhile, wears a target to signify
his place in the proceedings. The blatant large yellow
star on his chest might as well be a bulls-eye. He
looks hip, stunning, like an advertisement for Absolute
Vodka come to life from the pages of “Interview” magazine.
Absolute Doom. His die is cast. We notice him. The
star on his chest is the black hole of space and time
dragging us into his soulless soul.
Van Sant uses the camera here not
only in new ways but even in daring, bold, intimidating
and majestic ways. In Van Sant’s hand, the camera
is a God and we see the world through the eyes of
the Gods. His long, lingering shots, filled with the
daunting absence of dialogue, the lumbering sounds
of the natural world, dare us not to look away. His
camera holds the image for aeons, for centuries, and
we see the barren, desolation of existence, the vast
landscape of the tactile world. We float in the ether
above it, we circle the characters, imitations of
Gods themselves, like the birds do. We look at the
world and the characters from the front, from the
side, from behind. From inside out. To us they are
almost vacuous, non-entities. What curious enigmatic
creatures are these mortals who must walk upon the
ground and adhere to the declarations of time.
But Van Sant isn’t simply about
focusing like Warhol on the male physique or like
Ansel Adams on the natural world. Instead he opts
to use the camera and the sound recorder to do so
much more. He moves the camera to utilize the frame
in expressive ways. He holds the camera still for
agonizingly long shots to express the vastness of
nature, of the incredible insurmountable ruggedness
of the landscape. In a stunning 360 shot he circles
Affleck in a slow dolly around the actor that moves
so slow it changes every second with new shadows,
new images. The movement is so slow that we actually
think we can see Affleck getting sunburned in the
harsh redness of the unfiltered sunlight. In this
sequence, a single tear practically says as much as
one of Shakespeare’s soliloquy. The camera speaks
massive dialogue.
But even more striking is just how
Van Sant uses focus in the film. A less gifted, less
talented and less artistic filmmaker would simply
use the blur of an out of focus shot to accentuate
the searing heat of the naked sunlight. Van Sant does
this but so much more. Since we are angels and the
camera are our eyes, Van Sant uses focus to change
the image and lets us look at the images of the film
in every conceivable way. He does not just use direction
or angle, but also focus to offer us new insights
and new visual impressions of what we are seeing.
Affleck is a character. Damon is a character. The
landscape is a character. The sun is a character.
The camera is a character. And in this film, the focus-puller
is a character too. What Van Sant does with focus
is revolutionary.
As has been said, the music in “Gerry”
is spatial and purposeful. Van Sant breaks away several
times in the film to bring us these musical montage
moments. The image accentuated by the ambient solo
piano music of Arvo Part is nothing short of devastatingly
haunting and beautiful. These moments could be considered
equally as music videos for the works as they could
be sequences of the film. Arvo Part’s ambient music,
like that of Eno, must be listened to carefully. Much
is being said here. Music keeps time and time is of
the essence in “Gerry.” The measured notes of the
songs, creates no rhythm, no harmony, no beat for
the film. Instead it measures its pace in the elongated
and slow way that water drips out of a faucet or that
blood drips out of a pinhole wound. Just when you
think the song has finally reached it’s plinkety-plink
conclusion, it fools you, a few more notes are heard,
like the final breathes let out of a dying man, staccato,
halting, ethereal, haunting, elongating. Echoing.
Reaching out for the edge of the world, the end of
our life, our hand touches not the sky or the land
but moves slowly towards nothingness, elongated in
space.
Affleck and Damon, like Van Sant,
take this film very seriously. They know they are
creating something that isn’t about story or character
or even an idea. While caught in the modus operandi
of method acting, the two seem to have literally gone
for days with food, water, a bath or shaving. Their
facial hair grows, their bodies become weak, their
skin becomes more and more red, weathered by the sun
and the wind. And even though the verisimilitude of
it all seems quite convincing, in the long run it
doesn’t matter because story and character here do
not matter. What matters is the effect of the sun
on matter, on human skin. The same effect could have
been had by putting a pool of water in the desert
and filming its evaporation. This film isn’t about
a story. It isn’t about the chronological procession
of time, at least, not in the manner that movie making
and storytelling usually is. This is about the endlessness
of time, the fact that time truly has no rhythm and
no measured momentum because time doesn’t move. Time
simply is.
Gerry is perhaps the greatest film
I have ever seen. It opened my head as if it were
a can of film… as if it were the sun… as if I was
a God.
Notes:
Cinematography by Harris Savides.
The film has no opening credits
but does begin with a powder blue screen that appears
for about 10 seconds. This same powder blue is used
as the background of the end credits. There is no
music over the end credits. I don’t recall any fades
or cross fades in the movie.
The film is dedicated to Ken Keysey.
The film played at Sundance in 2002.
Viewed in Austin in March 2003
