Meandering Thoughts On The Film Gerry and Non-Narrative Films and etc.

 I don’t think I’m out of line by saying Gus Van Sant has had a really interesting career. Starting out making somewhat controversial films that involved drug addiction, homosexuality, and prostitution, he settled into a pattern for the remainder of the 90s of increasingly mainstream fare—which is to say nothing of their quality, as I don’t think anyone would say Good Will Hunting is a bad movie!

Following the disastrous, masturbatory shot-for-shot remake of Psycho in 1998, Van Sant quickly delivered the above average Finding Forrester, which is mainly known for inspiring the meme-tastic series of websites, YTMND, based on a cheesy line of dialogue shown in trailers that seemed to be everywhere on TV during its release window. The next thing we all knew, he returned in 2002 with Gerry, a film that stands in stark contrast to even his most experimental/unconventional work from the past.

Of course, anyone who had been paying attention to his career outside of movies would not have been as shocked. Starting in the 80s he worked on a few spoken word projects with William S. Burroughs (who had a minor role in Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy in 1989). 1997 saw him release the novel Pink, which is widely considered to be his reflections on River Phoenix’s death. The same year saw the release of his self-titled debut album, which I haven’t heard and know nothing about, and a year later, 18 Songs About Golf, which I haven’t heard but possibly know something about, assuming its title is literal.

Soon Van Sant would returned to films exclusively for the remainder of his career, beginning with the “Death Trilogy” of Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days. Though there is in fact a linear story that progresses in each of these movies, the non-narrative label hangs on them like a proud badge. We are not being shown the true beginning or ending of these stories, and often some likely crucial moments are left out completely—Gerry shows us the two titular leads talking about everyday topics like Wheel Of Fortune rather than the reality of their own predicament. But in not talking about their perilous situation, they actually are if you dig below the surface and see the subsoil, err, subtext. Like the contestant they seem to be mocking for their poor choices/playing of the game show, the two leads have similarly done stupid, arrogant things and gotten themselves in life-threatening trouble. But to acknowledge out loud that this is happening would make it real, instead of ignorable, and therein is the rub I suppose.

I would argue of all 3 of these movies, Last Days has the least going on if you don’t know what it’s inspired by. In fact if memory serves I’m not sure this movie would be anything other than pretty dull if you went in somehow unaware of Kurt Cobain and his suicide (or I suppose his final days?). Meanwhile, though inspired by a true story, Gerry has more of a definite conclusion yet somehow is less narrative. Imagine if Quentin Tarantino directed Castaway and that’s the odd vibe this movie generates: let’s have loose, improvisational conversations and not “take seriously” the survival situation we’re in.

Gerry was probably one of the first artsy fartsy movies I ever saw, during the fateful era of my late college years to my mid 20s, when I basically watched through every movie my local library had. I remember thinking afterwards that I should have hated the movie, since I spent so much of it thinking to myself, “well, this has to go somewhere, right? There has to be some kind of payoff for any of this?”

You can bluntly label the “Death Trilogy” as mercy killing, murders, and suicide (Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days, respectively) but in some ways you could argue the 3 films mix these. After all, in Gerry, shortly after ‘mercy killing’ his companion, the sole survivor soon is rescued and we’re left with ambiguous feelings based on the look on his face. Did he intentionally kill his companion and use the “lost in the desert” as a cover story? Is everything we saw really as it happened? Likely, the movie is not trying to get us to ask these questions, but they occurred to me, and that’s the beauty of a non-narrative film: you can fill in the blanks yourself just as readily as you can sit down with those blanks and be comfortable with them. Elephant never seems to ask or answer why the school shooting is happening, and perhaps in its case, that’s not the point, just as Last Days doesn’t ask or answer why the Cobain-doppelganger commits suicide.

As a side note, in the real case that Gerry was loosely inspired by, the surviving person alleged that they had made a death-pact with the companion they “mercy killed” but that they were too weak to kill themselves. Now, there’s other details to the real case that make the mercy killing aspect more questionable, but I’m not sure that’s pertinent to Gerry. Anyway, in some sense suicide as an option hangs over Gerry just as it does Elephant, a film obviously based on the Columbine Massacre, which famously concluded with a murder-suicide on the part of the shooters. Of course Last Days is about the main character committing suicide, though like Elephant this is implied and not shown. But I digress.

Let’s pivot into another discussion while my mind is wandering. Actually, wandering is a good concept to pick up on here, since most of Gerry is two characters wandering. At times there’s shots that evoke the mysterious and decimated landscapes of The Zone in Stalker (the movie, not the game, just to be clear) and here we arrive at the point I want to pick apart: the distinction between art film and non-narrative film. As there’s a huge amount of overlap between the two, let’s focus on what—in my mind, at least—sets them apart. Art films don’t strictly have to be non-narrative, though they often are, or at least obfuscate their narrative; or even negate it by not offering even the hint of one. Meanwhile, non-narrative films are almost always art films, but not always.

Let’s use two examples to illustrate the difference.

Memento is very much in my mind an art film. It doesn’t offer easy answers to the viewer, and as you experience it for the first time, I strongly suspect most people arrive at the conclusion that it’s actually going backwards chronologically, or anyway, the main layer of the narrative is (people often forget there’s another narrative in black and white exclusively that is in chronological order). Now, you can probably find a fan edit of the film that presents the main narrative in ‘real’ chronological order, but all this does is clarify what the actual order of events is. For the first 20-30 minutes, for some I’m guessing Memento feels like a non-narrative film that soon reveals itself as simply an art film. Though also presented in non-chronological order, Pulp Fiction by contrast is neither an art film nor a non-narrative film. Puzzling out its story order is not essential to understanding and appreciating Pulp Fiction, whereas the revelation is essential to Memento. It’s almost as if at first viewing Memento was edited using the cut-up technique of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. It is so baked into the very structure and framework of the film as a successful art film so that if you take away this non-narrative structure, it becomes a very different work. Indeed I have to assume if viewed with no narrative puzzle to unlock it would become a mere revenge film with a pretty good twist toward the end. So it would be a M. Night Shyamalan movie, basically.

Meanwhile, Gerry itself can be used to qualify it as a non-narrative film instead of an art film, because it straddles the line of a non-narrative film. By which I mean, the plot isn’t really the point of the movie, though there is in some sense a linear story being told. It’s almost like a hybrid of a dialogue heavy hangout movie, ala Clerks or Dazed and Confused, and a pseudo-real time survival movie ala 127 Hours. Just because a film has a simple narrative does not mean it can’t be non-narrative, or have non-narrative elements. Take something like The Mirror: absolutely an art film, absolutely non-narrative. Yet it does present vignettes of life and memories, which in some sense are story elements of the narrator’s life. What, then, eliminates Gerry from art film status? Well, to me there’s nothing going on beneath the surface. There’s no subtext, there’s no dreamlike imagery or ideas to unpack, there’s no abstraction, there’s no visual symbolism or metaphor, and there’s not truly an open-endedness to the film in terms of the beginning or the ending. Mulholland Drive seems to have a definite beginning, middle, and ending, until you arrive at the actual final moments and it feels like a dream/nightmare that could just keep repeating, a recursive story or Mobius Strip.

Now, all of that said, this is no scientific field, so you’re free to view Gerry as anything if it makes sense to you.

Unedited Thoughts on Edward Hopper

Really the most obvious thing that jumps out to one is the sense of loneliness and solitude and contemplation in Hopper’s paintings. Even when there is no human in the paintings, there is a tremendous sense of the artist or the viewer adding something to the room or landscape by viewing it. Hopper’s works often depict lone humans in different situations, and when we’re able to see their facial expressions, they’re never one of outright happiness. We see person after person in environments made by humans—buildings, cities, offices, movie theaters, homesteads, etc.—and what stands out is how lonely and solitary they feel. Anyone who has ever felt utterly, devastatingly alone in a crowded room can relate.

Rather than pick up on how Hopper’s works influenced things like the liminal art/photography movement, I think it’s worth noting that to me his paintings aren’t about the absence of things or being in an in-between zone/state of being of some sort. Rather when there’s humans they seem resistant to their current situation yet resigned to it. They’re still lost in thought or rumination about their life but their look and auras are of one who has accepted, perhaps capitulated to the situation they’re in, whether it’s an unhappy marriage or a new suddenly unhappy job or a moment or realization you know you can’t do anything about. When there are no human figures, we see ourselves in the landscapes; we feel almost invited in to project our own feelings of loneliness and alienation.

Yet in this last point I find there to be a feeling of mutuality and invitation in Hopper’s works. Even if they make you feel lonely, they also make you aware that other people have felt just like you have, even if the details are technically different. I look at a work like Man Seated On Bed (1906) and Summer Interior (1909) and especially Office In A Small City (1953) and I can see flashes of my own life, and/or people I’ve known, in these snapshots in time. With the latter work we see a common technique of Hopper’s during this mid to late era, where we see a human figure but also a bit of a voyeuristic angle were we see the exterior of the building/setting the human figure is in. Perhaps another way to see it is almost like an omnipotent viewer peering into dollhouses at the tiny lives there.

The emptiness of the cityscapes with one human figure in focus really underscores how many people over the years have felt alienated and alone despite ironically living in large urban environments. Curious then that the last painting I’m riffing off of should specify that it’s portraying a SMALL city. Anyway, I imagine the person in this painting has just sat down for their first day of work, and—peering across the cityscape that at first perhaps is scenic and lovely but will soon become ordinary and repetitive—it dawns on them that this is going to be the next however many years of their life. You are just a cog in the machine of society; welcome home.

Interesting to me that some art critics back in the day tried to associated Hopper’s later works with abstract art/surrealism, I think this is just because of the vaguely dreamlike feeling his later human-less landscapes/cityscapes/roomscapes can have. Certainly you can see Rooms By The Sea (1951) and it can look a bit along the lines of a Renè Magritte b-side, but this is another feeling the viewer brings to the work. If you visually engage with this work you can explain away how the perspective makes it seem like the door opens directly onto water, when in actuality this room may be up on a hill overlooking a body of water, with the POV disguising the steps or slop just outside the door. One could interpret this painting quite simply and just as validly as: the open door to nature brings in water and light, crucial elements to (most) life. While the room in the back has sunlight too, it’s less and fainter than the open door to nature.

Much has been commented on, even by the artist himself, with her focus on light and shadows. I feel this is mirrored in the focus on loneliness/solitude and external forces. By which I mean, even in the landscapes with no human figure, the viewer sort of substitutes in and is made to reflect on their own feelings. The landscape can match your mood or you an allow it to suggest one to you. When there are human figures, even more than one, you still get the sense they are inside themselves and looking outward, rather than imagining how they fit “into” the scene they’re in. For instance, the earlier cited work Summer Interior depicts a woman who is in her environment yet given the arrangement and her state of dress and look, she is also a million miles away from her environment focused on something else. Did she just get divorced? Is she depressed and thinking of the past? Or it is even something good that has her so flustered?