short film reviews, criticism, and occasional musing.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Gerry (2002, USA)

I don't know what it was that finally brought me around to seeing Gus Van Sant's Gerry - maybe Paranoid Park's strong reviews, or Casey Affleck's performance in Gone Baby Gone. In any case, I was pretty sure that I'd either love it or hate it - and I actually really liked it. It's simple, absurdist, and hypnotically beautiful. Finally breaking Van Sant's terrible maudlin streak in the late 90's, Gerry follows two Gerrys, Affleck and Matt Damon, as they lose themselves on a desert hike. The script is spare, but the cinematography is not - while deceptively simple, the set-ups are uniformly gorgeous, and often quite terrifying, as the landscape ends up so entirely dominating the human figures within it. It also helps to convey the growing sense of disorientation within the story, as movement of landscape and light seem to change without reason, before abruptly changing back again.

Though he's obviously one of Hollywood's major stars now, I hope that Damon doesn't stop working on projects like Gerry from time to time. He's established himself as one of the few seemingly normal people in the industry, with an often keen sense at picking projects and willingness to take the occasional risk. Gerry is the kind of risk I hope that Damon keeps taking, even post-Bourne and the Ocean's movies.

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