Review of Gerry (2002) by Big F — 07 Dec 2003

What is it with Gus van Sant and making movies in 2003? Take issue with my [i]Elephant[/i] review if you must, but there is [i]nothing[/i] in [i]Gerry[/i] besides Harris Savides' cinematography. It's possible that for some people, an hour and 40 minutes of looking nice in the desert is enough. I, however, would disagree, and I honestly enjoy well-shot natural scenes as much as the next person, if not more. There just has to be something else going on, and there wasn't. Damon and Affleck call each other Gerry. Amazing! That must be meaningful! Or, stupid. They have occasional idiotic conversations about how well Affleck is doing in some video game set in ancient Greece or the last episode of Wheel of Fortune Damon watched. I'm surprised Van Sant just didn't put the two of them in shirts that said "I'm with postmodern" and arrows pointing at each other. I guess that might have restricted their range of movement too much. The only other stuff they say is ridiculously vague, such as this "hilarious" line: "Fuck the thing. It's probably just some thing at the end of the trail.".

So they're looking for a "thing." And they call each other "Gerry." And NOTHING HAPPENS. There are a couple of perfunctory "actual plot points," but even these really aren't interesting, especially since the one comes so late in the movie that I had long since stopped caring.

Can you make a movie that's just about walking and talking and have it be interesting? Sure, I guess so. Can you do it without such pesky things as "characters?" No. No, you cannot. Van Sant didn't give us any characters in [i]Elephant[/i], either, just archetypes. Here he doesn't even bother with those, and it's dreadfully boring. All the Savideses in the world couldn't make [i]Gerry[/i] interesting. All they can do is bump its grade to a D.