Over the weekend I watched Gerry. I saw the trailer a very long time ago, and I was attracted to it’s premise and style immediately – but I never got around to it. The director, Gus Van Sant, has consistently been presenting work that is exploratory and interesting – each of his features have been different, and for the most part – quite satisfying. I remember watching Matt Damon and Ben Affleck win the screenwriting Oscar for Good Will Hunting, and thinking to myself that these two had an incredible future. As the years played out, based upon the scripts each actor chose – it is clear that Matt did most of the writing, while Ben sat next to him in a barbooth acting like the same guy he did in Hunting, his one and only good role. But back to Gerry. In this one, it’s Ben’s superiorly talented little brother that carries the Affleck title, and he and Mr. Damon work together beautifully – which is extremely important in this feature, as they are the only actors that work together at all. The film opens with a flat blue screen accompanied by Arvo Pärt’s Alina, which I first became aware of watching Tom Tykwer’s Heaven. It is some of the most brilliant modern classical music ever written (my sisters might remember that I was content listening to that collection for the entirety of a fourteen-hour-straight drive to South Dakota last fall). Needless to say, within minutes I was quite pleased. In fact, it took more than several minutes for the opening sequence to move to its second shot. For many, the length of the shots, the spare dialogue, and the ambiguous purpose will make this film unbearable. For me, it is a breath of fresh air – one of the most fulfilling visual experiences in the recent past. It is really more of a meditation than a feature film, which naturally gives it an artistic distinction. If Mr. Van Sant were not part of the Hollywood system, and he didn’t have the access to the funds, or actors that he did in making this – he easily could have presented it in the Whitney Biennial and received the type of response this film calls for. The composition as a whole is highly formal, and richly visual – while also being philosophically loaded. There is certainly a relationship to film past – to the modern and post-modern European pioneers, but I see a stronger relationship to art and ideas surrounding the American Landscape. In fact, the relationship to the art of the West is also kept with the land itself. For some, a surface look may render this film quite spare. Yet for those who are in the practice of truly looking, you won’t be disappointed. In under two hours, Mr. Van Sant has managed to say something about the modern man, the type of relationship he is capable of having, and the way in which he lonesomely searches, seeks, and moves in a vast land that will always be foreign – the American Dream, if you will. Needless to say, he has said nearly all that I have wanted to say for the last two years in two brief hours. Watch this film. You may not like it, many of you will fall asleep. Keep watching, it’s about you.
Some of you may be asking yourselves (and some have even asked me), “Does Mr. Robert love every movie he sees? If so, why does he not marry them?” The short answer is “No.” Part of the reason you are going to see a lot of positive “reviews” on this site is because it’s a journal – I am moved to write about what inspires me, not about what doesn’t, unless it really doesn’t (Jerry Bruckheimer, Julian Schnabel, Howard Dean, et al.) I also like to think I’ve gotten better at picking better movies in the first place – not to sound self-obsessed, but I really don’t see that many bad movies any more.