Gerry is, simply, about two men getting lost in the desert. Many things crossed my mind as I watched it, many of them concerning routes I might take in writing this reviews. I entertained the possibility that the movie might be as hard to recommend as Jackass. I noted the presence of some Mamet-style dialogue, and wondered if the following lack of dialogue could be considered a Mamet-style silence. I was aware of the way the occasional score at first was consistently grounded with a repetitive low octave chord, which symbolically disappeared as the characters in film lost their physical and mental bearings.

I thought of all this, and a great many other things, but the brilliance of Gerry is that it never let my thoughts never stray past the film itself. Considering the pacing of the picture, this is a rather triumphant accomplishment.

You may well have heard about the film, and how it contains very little in the way of plot or dialogue and even less in the way of action or exposition. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck play the two young men, both named Gerry. They wander off a nature path in the desert and become hopelessly lost, and the camera follows them, in long uninterrputed takes, as they walk and walk and now and then share a few words. Some of these takes last upwards of ten minutes, the only sound being the pitter patter of footsteps. You can break the movie up into shots, rather than scenes, and there is a lengthy (and funny) one in which Affleck tries to figure out how to get off a large rock he's climbed up on that is about as close as the film gets to portraying any sort of conflict.

Unless you count the conflict with nature, of course. Gerry and Gerry gradually grow weak and delirious due to exposure and lack of food or water; what at first seemed to be a silly little accident becomes an extremely dire situation. They climb peak after peak, trying to spot the highway that they somehow managed to get away from. There are endless 360 degree panoramas of the desert that are beautiful in their scope and frightening in their intention. There have been some comparisons to The Blair Witch Project, which are actually quite legitimate. The film gradually becomes quite eerie and unnerving, but these unhappy campers face a far more realistic foe than any supernatural entity.

There actually is a linear line of plot development in the film; all this wandering builds up to something, a conclusion that gradually becomes more and more inevitable (and possibly predictable, although not in any trite way). There is no exposition or dialogue to lead up to it, but pay close attention to an interlude in which Affleck and Damon are resting. The camera dollies around Affleck as he looks out into the sunset; Damon, meanwhile, watches Affleck, his face entirely masked by a T-shirt, save for his eyes. The entire purpose of the film can be intuited from this sequence.

In the press release for the film, director Gus Van Sant (who I think has with this made his best film to date) said that his intent was to slow everything down to the point that every nuance of every frame of the film provides development and exposition, rather than any dialogue or action. This is a bold experiment, and a successful one. Unadventurous viewers may find it trying; those sick of mindless plots and easy answers will be thrilled and fascinated by it. You probably know already if it's your type of movie; if you're not sure, I'd suggest you give it a try. It's as simple as a film could be, or as complex as you're willing to allow it to be.