When Matt Damon, Casey Affleck and Gus Van Sant went to the
Sundance Film Festival last year, they were Hollywood folks at the
independent film party. But you wouldn’t have known that from
their un-Hollywood film, “Gerry.”
“Even though we were Hollywood types crashing Sundance
last year, I thought that our film over-sundanced Sundance,”
said Van Sant, director of “Gerry,” which opens Friday
at the Nuart Theater.
Van Sant is known for previously directing Damon in “Good
Will Hunting,” and “Gerry” may not be what
audiences would expect from the pair.
“Gerry” takes place in the desert, where Damon and
Affleck have lost their way and are trying to get back to
civilization. Made with a crew of 20 people and shot at locations
in 120-degree heat in Death Valley and Argentina, it’s not so
much a story as it is a premise for watching these characters walk
up and down the barren landscape. The reason they’re there is
equally amorphous: They’re looking for “the
thing.”
“It could be a religious statue. It could be a cave
painting,” Van Sant said. “We never went so far as
having it be a metaphor for the end of the journey, death, God or
anything like that. But, because we were in the desert, everything
started to take on those feelings.”
Damon had other ideas as to what the thing might be.
“Did Gus say it was a rock shaped like a monkey’s
head?” Damon said.
Indeed, no one seems to know what it is about, but nevertheless
the film acquires various meanings from all these decisions that
were made accidentally on purpose.
“When we started out, we went into the desert and forged
this thing as we went,” Van Sant said.
The film features long stretches of time where nothing is said,
emphasizing the desperation and hopelessness of their trip. One
three-minute shot consists of a close-up view of them bobbing up
and down.
For even more realism, Damon and Affleck are essentially playing
themselves, talking in the special code which they have cultivated
since they were 8-year-old friends. The word “gerry”
itself is their private slang for “screw up,” but also
doubles as “dude.” Damon and Affleck start in the
middle of conversations in the film, and the audience slowly
catches on as if eavesdropping.
“They could talk about “˜Wheel of Fortune’ and
it would take half the conversation before you figure out they were
talking about a game show,” Van Sant said. “We’re
just observing the conversation in the same way we’re
observing their walk or their getting lost.”
The film has no lighting except from the sun and moon, no makeup
except the desert sand, and no wardrobe changes. There’s a
realism here that is relatively uncharted in mainstream filmmaking,
and it ends up feeling a bit like a well-made home movie.
“It’s kind of like a movie you make in your back
yard,” Damon said. “It felt like our project that we
were doing in free time. It never felt like work, even though it
was more work than most movies because we were doing it 24 hours a
day.”
Damon made this movie coming off of “The Bourne
Identity” and “Ocean’s Eleven,” Hollywood
action films from which Damon says he needs a “Gerry”
to get away sometimes. Damon is an award-winning screenwriter and
is also working to further prove his versatility in a new Farrelly
brothers movie about conjoined twins.
Affleck sees “Gerry” as the ultimate in artistic
freedom ““ a project to escape the typecasting that traps
celebrities.
“If you’re Bruce Willis, you can greenlight a movie
with a lot of money. Then why not take chances and do the things
you want to do, things that excite you,” Affleck said.
“I don’t think Matt wants everyone to expect something
when they go to see a Matt Damon movie.”