Piston_Smash

"Gerry" is the story of two pals - both with the eponymous name - who go for a walk along a desert Wilderness Trail, stray from the path and become hopelessly lost. That's not it in a nutshell, by the way. That's the entire film. All of it. Totally. I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when Van Sant pitched this one.

The majority of the film is composed of long static shots that go on for ever. We don't see the two Gerries in close up until minute 46! By this time Van Sant's decision to film Affleck and Damon in mid- or long-shot has successfully kept me at such a distance from the characters that I'm not too bothered about their predicament.

The opening shot of the film, a tracking shot of a car driving through the desert, signals the pace and format of the film. Van Sant keeps us behind and outside the car so that we cannot identify with the occupants and hence cannot become involved with them as characters. When we get to see them, both driver and passenger are uncommunicative and almost motionless, like a pair of shop window mannequins.

The two Gerries leave their car and begin to follow a Wilderness Trail and for long periods all we see are interminable shots of the pair just... walking. One early shot is in and out of focus like a drunkard. In between the extended tracking shots are extended static long-shots of desert landscapes and mountains. These are magnificent at first but after a while the awe of the desert wears off and you are left with an impatience that never seems to recede.

Van Sant has abandoned the classic establishing shot/mid-shot/close-up pattern which places characters in a location and then places the viewer next to the characters. Instead, we are kept at a great distance from them so that we become disinterested scientists watching a petri-dish experiment, hardly engaging with the Gerries at all. It's as if Van Sant is telling us to ignore these two people - just concentrate on the desert, that's what's important.

Half an hour in and there's no sense of urgency or concern on the characters' part that they are in a tight spot. One scene in particular reflects this. Affleck's Gerry has climbed a tall lookout rock and cannot get down. He and Damon's Gerry discuss what they should do next. They decide that the stranded Gerry must jump and that the Gerry on the ground must make him a "dirt mattress" to land on. The entire scene, aside from a 30 second mid-shot of Affleck halfway through, is one continuous long-shot that lasts TEN EXCRUCIATING MINUTES. Ten minutes of Matt Damon kicking dirt into a pile is not compelling cinema.

At minute 46 we get the film's first close-up. It is a tracking shot of both Gerries as they walk through the desert. The shot lasts three and a half minutes. A minute and twenty into this shot, to liven things up, I suppose, Affleck looks behind him and then looks forward again, and... continues walking. Perhaps another director with different actors could have composed a similar shot but allowed the audience to see the conflicting emotions on the actors' faces, thus bringing us into the film and the characters' emotional states. Perhaps Affleck - and certainly Damon - just don't have the ability to project this.

It's only at minute 55 (can you see how uninvolved with the film I was when all I was doing was watching the DVD counter and timing the shots...) that the characters start to show a bit of emotion and worry about their future and we start to think that maybe these two wooden dummies on a desert stroll may be human after all.

At minute 61 the film's second close-up appears. Again, it's a shot comprised of both Gerries' heads as they guess at their journey's route so far, current location and possible direction of escape. An hour into the film I'm supposed to start caring about these boys? Sorry, Gus. Too late, mate.

Is it all bad though? No, I don't think so. There is much about the film that recommends it. The photography is marvellous - but it could have done with a little more economy. That's why editting was invented: to compress time. Six and a half minute tracking shots of figures staggering through a landscape, countless time-lapse shots of clouds forming and dissolving over distant mountains and endless static long-shots of the screen jaggedly bisected into light sky and dark rock made me feel that I was in an art gallery appreciating still photography. I've been to Death Valley and Nevada, where many of the locations were, and there is so much awe inspiring landscape that after a while you fail to appreciate it. Similarly with this film.

This is obviously one of Van Sant's experimental films. Perhaps he's experimenting with the audience's collective patience and capacity for endurance. I don't know. But what I do know is that there was an interesting story waiting to be told here. Two friends get lost in the desert and attempt to survive against the ravages of an unforgiving desert. Their external journey could have mirrored the internal journey of the characters coming into self-knowledge and understanding of our relationship with the desert. All we are left with is two robots whose batteries run down on a desert hike. Pity, really.

I suppose I'm left with the question - why? Why has Van Sant made a film about unresponsive, virtually emotionless characters in a cinematic language that may tend to alienate an audience? Why make a film about two young men trying to survive in a harsh environment but at the same time force us into indifference to their plight? Is it a reaction against the MTV rapid-edit attention-spanless generation of filmgoers? Maybe. Does the photographic style represent the implacable indifference of the desert? Possibly. Could Van Sant have involved his audience in his characters' drama more successfully? Definitely. Is this an exercise in indulgence?

I believe that Gerry is Van Sant's hymn to the desert wilderness. I think that his distancing techniques keeping the audience away from the human beings in the film is a method of stating that the desert is permanent and we are transient. We are insignificant in comparison with something as monumental as the desert landscape. We can make paths and trails through it, we can treat it with disdain, we can laugh at it; but the desert is forever and we disrespect it at our cost.

Andy Garcia is the "hero" in this predictable and ludicrous film. He plays Conner, a cop with a son who needs a bone marrow transplant to stay alive. Enter Michael Keaton as McCabe, a mad psychopathic criminal genius (aren't they all?) whose bone marrow is a perfect match. What follows is an irritating battle of wits between Conner and McCabe, who decides he'd like to bust outta the hospital using nothing but a half-swallowed ampoule of a magical elixir, a dislocated thumb and a cigarette lighter flint. Move over MacGuyver.

Garcia is particularly annoying as actor and character. His character is devoted to his son. Nothing wrong with that. Unless your devotion for your son means that EVERYONE ELSE'S life is meaningless and expendable. As McCabe tries to escape from the hospital Conner has to save McCabe's life many times because once dead, his bone marrow is no longer useful. Conner causes a cop to get shot as well as motorway carnage in his attempts to capture McCabe unharmed. I got increasingly more angry watching Garcia as Conner risk everyone he comes into contact with so that his son may have a chance of living. What about the rest of us? Don't we deserve a chance at life too? The Conner character seems to be rooted in the maverick cop tradition, playing by his own rules and deciding what is and isn't right. It's a world where a bully makes the rules and you follow them or face the consequences. Something along the lines of what happened in Germany in the Thirties...

Garcia as actor is annoying to the extreme, spending most of the film tearing about the place in a semi-crouch with one arm stiff by his side for some reason. He trots out his usual bits of actor's business that appear in most Garcia films. He does the scene where he grabs someone's head in both of his hands and speaks/shouts right into their face. He does the scene where he explosively loses he temper and kicks some furniture only to immediately regain control of himself and instantly become the ice-man. He does the scene where he shouts in anger at the top of his lungs, while his face looks as if he has just spent an afternoon staring at the test card. You know the stuff. We've seen it all before.

The film goes on for far too long and credibility is stretched time and again until even the densest viewer's intelligence is insulted. We're encouraged to sympathise with the Garcia character: his wife is dead, his son's dying, he's a cop, he's pretty, he is a devoted father etc etc, but really, all he is, is a self-centred fascist bully.

Keaton has to make flesh a one dimensional cliché of a character and he has a go but is on a losing wicket from the outset. How can you put a new and imaginative slant on the stock Mad Criminal Genius character? And Barbet Schroeder, what were you thinking? From the classic Barfly to this? Pity...