Themes: Survival in the Wilderness, Faltering Friendships
Main Cast: Casey Affleck, Matt Damon
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 103 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Gus Van Sant returned to his roots in experimental filmmaking with this offbeat feature, whose dialogue was entirely improvised by its two person cast. Two men named Gerry (played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) are driving through the desert regions of Death Valley, traveling towards an unknown destination. They pull over and set out on foot, presuming they're getting close to what they've come to find. Before long, Gerry and Gerry are both lost in an unforgiving desert without food, water, or other provisions, and the harder they try to find their way back to their car, they only dig themselves deeper and deeper into the desert. Gus Van Sant originally began shooting Gerry in Argentina, but was soon dissatisfied with the weather and the terrain, opting to start over in California and Utah; the film premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
After a Hollywood detour that led to the career low that was Finding Forrester, Gus Van Sant turned to European cinema and his indie roots to make Gerry, a fascinating, if flawed, return to form for the maverick filmmaker. The premise is simple: two friends named Gerry go for a hike in the Western wilderness and lose their way. That existential setup becomes the springboard for a visually stunning meditation on American expansionism and the implacability of nature, among other themes. Van Sant announces his grand ambitions early in the picture, with a long, wordless sequence following the two Gerrys as they drive down a winding desert highway to a tinkling score by Arvo Part. The rest of the movie is no less audacious. Van Sant has made no secret of the influence of Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr on Gerry. His master stroke is to transpose Tarr's rigorous, long-take aesthetic to the American West. The result is a landscape symphony of unusual power, at once elemental and stylized. As the wandering Gerrys, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are appropriately affectless. Though the sparse dialogue occasionally calls attention to its deliberate banality, the exchanges work for the most part, offering a stark counterpoint to the environment's grandeur. For all its formal brilliance, Gerry is not as profound as it thinks it is, suffering from a surfeit of underdeveloped ideas and an overdetermined ending. Considering its reach, however, the movie's flaws are forgivable. While it may not be a masterpiece, Gerry at least holds out hope that Van Sant may have found his way again. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
Jay Hernandez - Associate Producer, Dany Wolf - First Assistant Director, Gus Van Sant - Director, Arvo Pärt - Composer (Music Score), Harris Savides - Cinematographer, Dany Wolf - Producer, Felix Andrew - Sound/Sound Designer, Matt Damon - Screenwriter, Gus Van Sant - Screenwriter, Casey Affleck - Screenwriter, Leslie Shatz - Supervising Sound Editor
Gerry is a 2002 film directed by Gus Van Sant, starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck who also co-wrote the film with Van Sant. It was shot in a semi-improvised style with a small crew in Argentina, Death Valley, and the Utah Salt Flats, and is dedicated to the memory of Ken Kesey. It is the first film of Van Sant's "Death Trilogy", three films based on true-life deaths, and is succeeded by Elephant and Last Days.
Gerry is about two hiking companions who both go by the name "Gerry." "Gerry" is also a slang term used throughout the misadventure by both protagonists, meaning "to screw up."[1] Additionally, Van Sant revealed in interviews that Damon and the Affleck brothers already had used the term before the movie had even been named.[1]
The characters drive into the desert for a hike, to view a "thing" at the end of a wilderness trail. At the beginning of the hike, other hikers can often be seen nearby. After some walking, talking, and an impromptu foot race, they agree on their mutual disinterest in the site and decide to head back. It is only then they realize that they are lost in the desert.
The more the two try to work together to orient themselves and retrace their steps, the more dire their fate becomes; while at the same time, they grow increasingly irritated with each other. In their last day of wandering, mostly in silence, both protagonists collapse due to fatigue and dehydration. The weaker of the two (Affleck) proclaims that he is "leaving," and makes furtive motions toward strangling Damon's character, whereupon, Damon struggles on top of Affleck, dispassionately strangling him instead, before collapsing again.
After some time, Damon is awakened by the sound of an tractor trailer engine and heads with renewed energy in its direction. A highway appears through the fog, and Damon hitches a ride with a family, whom he watches in stunned silence.
The plot of the film shares some commonalities with the events surrounding the death of David Coughlin, who was killed by his friend Raffi Kodikian after the two became lost in Rattlesnake Canyon in New Mexico.
Notes
The story includes an anecdote about the game show Wheel of Fortune, where a contestant is unable to guess that "BARRE_ING" is "barreling". It has been noted that to Canadian or British contestants, the solution would not be obvious due to spelling differences.
