Gerry

source: Gerry

Two friends (both called Gerry) take a drive out into the New Mexico wilderness to go and see the thing. Following the trail they assume will lead them right there they eventually decide they are not going to find it and decide to head back to their car. However they have been blindly hiking for hours and before long they realise that they are lost. Sleeping rough that night, they continue their trek across the desert in search of a way out, putting their friendship under stress with every passing hour. Perhaps this is one of those like it or hate it type movies but I do dislike the way that those that love it feel the need to lash out at those that don't, claiming that they are perhaps stupid or hollow people for not getting the beauty of this movie. Personally I do slightly suspect that the viewers who fall over themselves to love this film have never really seen many films that compare and perhaps mistake being different and non-multiplex as being the same as having depth. That the film is minimalistic and different is not in question but there is no substance to this film other than what the viewer forces into their own experience of it. Having said that the film is still hauntingly beautiful to watch. The desert landscapes are impressive and really well captured – what a shame that you do not go to the cinema just to stare at landscapes. The cast of two have nothing to do but, as they are also responsible for the concept then they have nobody else to really blame. Affleck and Damon stumble around the place vaguely improvising but they have nothing about them; most of the time I found them an intrusion in front of the landscapes that were of much more interest. Overall then a beautiful but empty film. The landscapes are haunting but I could not find any of this beauty in the material (such as it was). Those desperately seeking something deep will find it, but that is different from the film actually having depth.

I have said this many times before during my trips through hundred of movies, but I can say with all certainty that Gerry is the worst movie I have ever seen in a theater. I do appreciate some of its aspects. I am all for experiential art, and I honor those attempting it. I absolutely love Damon and Affleck, who did an excellent job of conveying heaps w/o words. The score was excellent. Above all, I laughed hysterically at the dialogue when it showed up. Ahem… Now: This movie is unlike any experience I have ever experienced. The closest thing would be one of those 8 am classes with a tenured professor with his pile of index cards and a monotone drone. This was sheer torture! If you have the patience to stare at a rock for ten minutes straight, then circle the rock, while never varying your distance or focus, only to move on to a new rock, than this is the movie for you. This movie felt like a bad joke on the entire movie-going public. I'm all for minimalism, but this was just plain boring. Perhaps the most disappointing thing is that I personally think that Death Valley is stunningly beautiful, but this movie did very little to capture that. I was also very frustrated with the two boys for getting lost in the first place. They parked in a giant valley and walked towards the hills. When you want to find your way back…walk away from the hills! This took a major suspension of disbelief, which I was able to muster up at that early point of the film. On a side note…I couldn't help but smile every time they were right next to a parking lot, or the main road. All of the shots up on Dante's view had to be chosen very carefully. Looking down there is a road and looking behind them was a parking lot. Plus… I think I saw a car drive by in the background. This turned into more of a tirade than I had planned, but I was extremely frustrated. I'm not the most patient guy in the world, but no one should be patient enough for this absolute failure of a movie.

These guys get lost by wandering into 10 foot tall brush at a rest stop. They are in a small valley with a highway running through it. As they walk the terrain changes remarkably. For the life of me I can't see why they didn't crisscross the valley to find the highway. Any kind of methodical pattern would have taken them back to the car. This level of cluelessness could possibly be accepted as a reasonable plot device by people who can only navigate by street signs. But, I live in the country. For me it's fundamentally unrealistic. Since the entire premise of the movie crumbles under examination, I can only express my disappointment that Casey Affleck and Matt Damon were involved in this production.

I saw this movie at the Sundance Film Festival and hated it. There is no plot or character development to speak of. There is beautiful scenery and some very lovely camera shots, but the camera frequently lingers for 5 or 10 minutes at a time, circling around the object of its attention, without any dialogue at all. I understand that there were only about 100 camera shots in the entire film. It was reminiscent of Blow-up in some ways, but without as much interest. I'm sure it's an "important" film from the director's point of view, but the audience seems to have been entirely ignored. Of the 25-30 people I talked to about it, one liked it and the rest hated it.

What's wrong with GERRY is obvious from the very first scene . A car drives down a road in New Mexico and the camera holds the shot , and holds , and holds , and holds and keeps holding the shot . This is what is known as " shot length " where the camera doesn't cut to another shot . The average shot length according to film critic David Bordwell was between 8 and 11 seconds from 1930 to 1960 while in the 1970s it was between 5 and 8 seconds while at the turn of the century it had shortened to 3 to 6 seconds . There's exactly 100 shots in GERRY a film that lasts for 100 minutes . If your arithmetic is really bad then let me explain that the average shot length is one minute which is 20 times longer than the average film from the same period . What makes this even worse is down to the fact that there's very little happening narrative wise . The premise involves two blokes called Gerry getting lost in the New Mexico desert and what makes this film even more unbearable is that there's often a lack of dialogue . So you've got two young men trekking through the desert not saying much making the ridiculous shot length seem even more longer than it actually is There's something else that bugged me and that is Gerry and Gerry walk through some woodland early in the film . Think about that for a moment , they walk through some woodland in to a desert . If they're walking at a pace of perhaps three miles an hour then if they walked for about four hours then they'd be about twelve miles away from this woodland . Surely they'd still be able to make visual contact with the woodland ? We're also shown that the woodland they came from is relatively busy with families enjoying a nature ramble . Are we to consider that all of sudden the eponymous characters walk into a land based version of The Bermuda Triangele ? At no point would a relatively intelligent audience be fooled in to taking this premise seriously and while you need a suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy a great number of films there's nothing here that will make you buy in to the premise . If the characters had taken some flying lessons and the plane had crashed then this would be a more sensible way to set up the story but seems beyond the ability of authors Damon and Affleck to come with a stronger reason to set up the story I suppose you could praise Matt Damon and say that he doesn't want to be known simply for his hunky action star roles and while this might be true it's not really like he's stretching himself in this movie , I mean how much talent do you need to walk , and walk , and walk . Even if Ben Afflek had been cast instead of his brother Casey there's no way GERRY could possibly be a less unentertaining movie

I like Matt Damon and I like Casey Affleck. I also like meaningful and arty films. I hated Gerry. It now stands as the worst film I have EVER seen. It is totally self-indulgent and an ego trip. Some scenes dragged on for so long that people in the cinema were laughing at how bad it was. If I had not been with two other people, I would have walked out. matt, Casey and the director should be ashamed - this is not arty, this is an insult.

"Desert Seinfeld,' where it is really about nothing and nothing really happens. It's Gus Van Sant's `Gerry,' not for Jerry Seinfeld, but for two young men, both named Gerry, who get lost while taking a hike on the `Wilderness Trail.' Comparisons to Beckett's `Waiting for Godot' and Antonioni's `Passenger' will occur the minute you see Casey Affleck and Matt Damon striking out to see a `thing' somewhere on the trail in an arid Arizona or South Dakota (although expertly filmed in Argentina and Utah). The only way the DP could improve on the landscape was to time-lapse clouds and sunrises, and do some slick digitizing when a character jumps from a very high rock. The long takes are spectacular, especially when Damon tries to extricate Affleck from the top of that `no-exit' rock. I was as pleased with the static camera and minimal editing as I often am with the realist work of Mike Leigh, who usually has much more dialogue than this minimalist film. In fact, except for the tinkling piano and violin coming in 3 times, `Gerry' could be a `Dogma' candidate. Van Sant has directed an existential piece to rival last year's `No Man's Land,' about the Bosnian soldier imprisoned on top of a spring-loaded land mine. Van Sant here questions the men's understanding of themselves or each other (their 'f**k you's' are lightly given and taken and they see one of themselves in a mirage). By the end of the journey, they have been appropriately humbled by a powerful Nature that threatens with distant thunder but never delivers water or lightning. Whatever the `thing' they set out to find, like Estragon and Vladimir in `Godot,' they do find the essential elements of life-birth, love, and death. That's pretty good for a film with no more than a paragraph of dialogue in all. This is one of those films that make a patient man of me and drives my plot-driven friends back to Ahnold.

Gerry is about 2 young men who are best friends that decide to set out on a nature hike. They get lost in the desert for days and dehydration sets in for both of them. They soon realize they are going to die. Instead of both suffering, one friend suffocates the other when he is in bad shape so he doesn't have to suffer. Shortly after, the remaining Gerry is rescued and he realizes he killed his best friend for nothing. There is not much of a plot, almost no dialogue, nothing scary, emotionally moving, or interesting in the slightest bit. There is no action or adventure. Basically, there is no real point. This is probably the most boring movie I have ever seen. If 2 guys walking through the desert not talking sounds interesting to you, then rent it, otherwise don't. It could have been made a lot better if there was actually dialogue, action, or a good point. I rarely ever write a comment for a movie but this one was so bad that I wanted people to know about it so they don't waste their evening watching it. If you are looking for an awesome movie about best-friendship between 2 males, try Simon Birch, which is excellent.

This must be an "art film." It may be acceptable on the festival circuit to watch two guys wander around lost, and largely silent, in a beautiful desert for nearly two hours, but not in my living room thank you. When the camera begins a 360-degree pan and doesn't even pause as it passes the protagonists, I presume we are supposed to think about the insignificance of human life against the backdrop of mountains and sand. I admit I did think about that -- the first time. By the third time, my thought was, "Have they lost their minds?" If the thematic message here is that two intelligent members of the current twenty-something generation cannot engage in genuine, self-revelatory communication even when confronted with nearly certain death, then I guess I got the point, though one could hardly call it a surprise. I was reminded of that cinema chestnut, "This movie had a surprise ending: just when you thought it would NEVER end, it did."