Gerry is a beautiful looking movie. Harris Savides' cinematography showing the beauty and desolation of the desert is breathtaking.
That being said, Gerry is also an incredibly boring movie. It's the story of two not-so-bright individuals lost in the desert. They walk and walk and walk. And then....get this...they walk some more! About the most interesting thing that happens is one of them gets stuck on top of a big rock and they spend a while trying to figure out how to get him down. The little dialogue there is is inane and uninteresting. Lost in the desert you'd think they'd have something more important to talk about than Wheel of Fortune or a computer game.
I guess this is an experiment in minimalism or something, and director Gus Van Sant is trying to show us the hopelessness of the situation these two nimrods find themselves in. No, scratch that. The situation they have put themselves in. But Van Sant seems to have forgotten that the soul of drama (and comedy, for that matter) is conflict. There is almost no conflict in this movie. The two characters call each other Gerry, and although you might think that their situation would pit them against each other, it doesn't. They have one or two mild arguments, but nothing significant. I know some people might say the conflict is between their hostile environment and themselves, but the desert is just as passive as the Gerries are. It's big and it's hot, and there is no water, but that's it.
Here's an example of one of the sequences in this movie that some folks might find interesting, but I didn't: One of the Gerries is sitting on a rock, looking pretty dejected. The camera does a very slow revolve around him; 360 degrees....very...sloowly. The the pint of view shifts to his surroundings and starts a very slow pan of the surrounding countryside. 360 degrees...very...slooowly. That's it.
Gerry is a beautiful film, but almost completely uninvolving. I'd rather look at a book of Ansel Adams photographs.
That being said, Gerry is also an incredibly boring movie. It's the story of two not-so-bright individuals lost in the desert. They walk and walk and walk. And then....get this...they walk some more! About the most interesting thing that happens is one of them gets stuck on top of a big rock and they spend a while trying to figure out how to get him down. The little dialogue there is is inane and uninteresting. Lost in the desert you'd think they'd have something more important to talk about than Wheel of Fortune or a computer game.
I guess this is an experiment in minimalism or something, and director Gus Van Sant is trying to show us the hopelessness of the situation these two nimrods find themselves in. No, scratch that. The situation they have put themselves in. But Van Sant seems to have forgotten that the soul of drama (and comedy, for that matter) is conflict. There is almost no conflict in this movie. The two characters call each other Gerry, and although you might think that their situation would pit them against each other, it doesn't. They have one or two mild arguments, but nothing significant. I know some people might say the conflict is between their hostile environment and themselves, but the desert is just as passive as the Gerries are. It's big and it's hot, and there is no water, but that's it.
Here's an example of one of the sequences in this movie that some folks might find interesting, but I didn't: One of the Gerries is sitting on a rock, looking pretty dejected. The camera does a very slow revolve around him; 360 degrees....very...sloowly. The the pint of view shifts to his surroundings and starts a very slow pan of the surrounding countryside. 360 degrees...very...slooowly. That's it.
Gerry is a beautiful film, but almost completely uninvolving. I'd rather look at a book of Ansel Adams photographs.
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