Cheap Gerry (DVD) (Casey Affleck, Matt Damon) (Gus Van Sant) Price

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Customer Reviews of Gerry

Much better than I'd heard
Honestly, the criticism of this movie has been so exaggerated. Before seeing "Gerry," I'd heard that the movie contained only two or three bits of sparse dialogue, that it was suffocatingly slow, and even that it contained a sunset shot "in real time." All of this is false. Someone else even suggested that the whole film was a practical joke, and that Van Sant, Affleck, and Damon were laughing all the way to the bank. Yes, because this movie is SO commercial. I'm sure it was a HUGE moneymaker for all of them. (That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.) As you've heard, this film is about two young men who get lost in the desert, and the movie does a good job of approximating what that would feel like. There is quite a bit of dialogue, although a lot of it is idle chatter or strategizing about how they're going to find their way back to the highway. Some of it, however, is pretty funny. The acting is great, the scenery is so beautiful and beautifully shot it's like a moving painting, and the end of the movie is haunting. I was still thinking about it the next day. No, this isn't wall-to-wall action or hilarity; don't go into it expecting that. Go into it expecting an interesting experimental film, and you won't be disappointed.

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Respect the effort, but...
The only reason I wanted to see this film is because I was informed that Bela Tarr's name is being credited in it. Being an admirer of the Hungarian filmmaker's "Werckmeister Harmonies", I did expect to find certain qualities of Tarr's to appear in "Gerry"(namely those of long takes, slow-moving, time-consuming and thus contemplative in those regards). Adds to that would be the curiosity on how Gus Van Sant would deliver such influence to a movie, as I also do found his previous works enjoyable in their own right. "Gerry", however, didn't give me the impact the way "Werckmeister.." (or other stylistically and/or conceptually similar films by, say, Tarkovsky, Haneke's "Time of the Wolf", etc.) did. It is a very existential film, and I generally love existential films, but I guess I just find it rather bland in the end. Perhaps this blandness IS the very point of this feature, and for that I gave an extra star for it. I do appreciate Damon, Affleck and Van Sant's effort on making this film though: it is a commendable project.
In addition, putting Arvo Part's compositions was one of the most successful attributes in this film.

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Visually stunning...but very drawn out.
This film would make the producers of National Geographic proud. It is a lonely and beautiful view of the desert we are given hear but the dialogue and purpose of this movie is vague and sparse. Alot of hopeless wandering in a big empty landscape devoid of anything.