Gerry - 2002 - 3½ Stars

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt described his compositions as 'tintinnabular' - 'like bells' - slow tempo music with few notes and long silences. Despite this, his pieces Spiegel Im Spiegel and Fur Alina are incredibly moving and rich. The film Gerry is much the same way, and these two pieces by Pärt are a supremely perfect choice to comprise the bulk of the film's music. There's a tiny skeleton of a plot and character, the film moves at a snail's pace, but it is still full of life.

It is somewhat difficult to believe that Gus Van Sant directed Gerry in 2002 coming off 2000's insanely mediocre Finding Forrester (which I happened to catch a large portion of last night in a post-Yankees stupor). More amusingly, the average rating on Netflix is 2.4 stars, which suggests a lot of folks who liked Matt Damon and Gus Van Sant in Good Will Hunting did not so much appreciate their effort here. It is funny how a varied film career can sometimes work against an artist.

Gerry is kind of like if a director took the first 20 minutes of Koyaanisqatsi and gave it characters. Ian accused me of using the more obscure to explain the less obscure in a previous entry, and I may again be doing that here, but the analogy will hold to anyone who's seen both. Maybe it's more like Easy Rider updated for the 21st century. Whatever. It's certainly worth seeing if you can stomach a bit of wandering.