Gerry by Gus van Sant

Not for the easily bored, Gerry is a homage to Bela Tarr's meditative cinema from the American director Gus van Sant.

Superficially, the film is about two friends who get lost in a desert of dreamlike proportions and changing vistas. That's all.

It is a film which can get you to tune into a different rhythm in your brain. The experience is best described as trance-like.

What does the desert mean? What do the hallucinations about the road signify? Who are the two people, or are they the masculine and feminine of humanity, the ego and the id?

Gerry is the first in the "Death Trilogy" by Gus van Sant. The second film, Elephant is equally, if not more, spellbinding.

I am yet to see the last one: Last Days.

Once one has tasted the appetizer that is this trilogy, one might be ready for the monumental seven-hour epic, Satantango by Bela Tarr.

Recommendation: Must-see.

(If there is a large number of good films in my reviews, it is because as I am starting out writing about films, I find it easier to write about the films that I have liked the best).