Gerry

An inexplicably compelling, far-outside-the-box excursion from director Gus Van Sant, this modestly sweeping experimental movie--sporting very long takes and very little dialogue--is about little more than two buddies getting lost in the desert. It stars Van Sant's co-writers Casey Affleck and Matt Damon, who aren't too worried about their predicament initially, but after several days of wandering through increasingly barren terrains they become dispirited, dehydrated ghosts of their former selves, slowly, weakly, silently shuffling across barren, never-ending expanses of hard white sand. Gerry is not a movie about dramatic subjects like survival (no mention is made of hunger) or self-discovery, nor is it about acting challenges (this isn't a Death Valley Cast Away). Rather, it's a meditative, metaphorical, metaphysical exploration of friendship and personal tribulation that, in a cunning stroke of simplicity, captures the isolation and desolation--and the paradoxical beauty--of this fateful journey by treating the camera almost as an invisible, unblinking third party wandering helplessly along in tow. The only problem is that without the big screen to envelop you in the cinematic desert, Gerry loses some of its sweeping power and grit. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include the 14-minute “making-of” featurette “Salt Lake Van Sant,” and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for a small but solid film.] (R. Blackwelder)