Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Two friends named Gerry become lost in the desert after taking a wrong turn. Their attempts to find their way home only lead them into further trouble.
Gerry is a radically minimalist work from Gus Van Sant, deliberately stripping cinema down to near-silence and long contemplative takes of two men wandering a barren desert. Cinematography by Harris Savides is stunning — vast, sun-bleached, hypnotic compositions that transform landscape into existential dread. Its novelty is genuinely high: the film is one-of-a-kind in its austere refusal of conventional narrative, dialogue, or dramatic scaffolding, sitting alongside Béla Tarr more than mainstream American cinema. Plot is deliberately thin — nearly nonexistent by design — which earns it a low score on pure narrative terms. Acting is restrained and credible from Damon and Affleck, though the minimalist style limits expressive range. The ending is quietly devastating but its impact depends heavily on viewer investment in the preceding slowness.