RES Features
Q & A: Gus Van Sant
Out Of Line
Words: Anthony Kaufman
Photo: Photo by Harris Savides (Courtesy of THINKFilm)
A road movie with no road, a survival story where nothing happens, an experimental film with celebrities: Gus Van Sant's latest film Gerry embraces these paradoxes and pushes forward with a dazzling, dizzying piece of landmark American cinema. Inspired by the contemplative works of Hungarian master Bela Tarr, Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman and Russian mavericks Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Sokurov, Van Sant set out to make a film about two guys (played by collaborators Casey Affleck and Matt Damon) lost in a desert that unfolds in real time. "We weren't sure we were getting anything, because it was so obscure," Van Sant admits. "But I loved it." Shot over 24 days in the 128-degree heat of Argentina and California, Van Sant says the experience was "a little disorienting." Indeed, Gerry is confounding, mesmerizing and comical, a perilous journey that risks a mix of avant-gardist Michael Snow with My Own Private Idaho.
RES:Do you think we can open up the traditional codes of filmmaking? Is this film an attempt to change what we see in theaters?
Van Sant:I hope so. I wouldn't say that is going to happen overnight. But the mainstream cinema is borne out of the population voicing opinions and accepting styles that do evolve on their own. I don't think 23 years ago we would have thought that MTV would have influenced the way movies are shot. But now, 90-to-100 percent of the films made are influenced by things that happened first - if not on MTV, MTV adopted them and used them the most. But it's hard to say whether an esoteric, independent film influenced by Eastern European filmmakers is really going to do it. But you can never really tell. I'm doing it for my reasons, and I think if my reasons are picked up by whoever is listening, it can influence the culture.
RES:What are your reasons?
Van Sant:I'm usually reacting against whatever's going on, like that insane cutting MTV stuff, like Michael Bay's movies or Moulin Rouge. They have amazing shots, but you can't watch them because they're two seconds at the most. There's also the other reason: I had this inspirational moment while I was watching Bela Tarr's Satantango. I started to feel like I was watching something that was made before D.W. Griffith, the guy largely responsible for the system of long shot, medium shot, close-up. I always revered him for inventing that system. But as an art student, I wondered how you could get around it and subvert it. It almost seemed like an industrial way to present the story to the public, so the executives could edit as well as the filmmakers. It came about around the same time as the assembly line, so I tend to connect continuity editing to industrialized culture. And I think MTV's editing styles do try to subvert it. But Bela's films don't even play the game. The subversion comes from not buying into it, not by changing it by tiny degrees, but by not accepting it at all. It's also interactive in that you are part of the story. You're not being told the story so much as you are actually participating in the story. In these long takes of film, you have lots of time to react to what is going on, as opposed to processing new information and not being allowed to react.
RES:You like wide, open spaces. You return to landscapes, clouds, skies in many of your films. Why?
Van Sant:I live in Oregon, so maybe that's why. I also did a lot of collage when growing up. I started to do painting and collages that started with a landscape and putting objects onto the landscape. It was starting with the horizon line, like a Salvador Dali, and then you put the cube in the lower left with a shadow, and then the clock hangs in the tree. I did a lot of that, and as I developed into a filmmaker, that became part of the filmmaking: the horizon line.
RES:What is that line about? It's all over the place in Gerry.
Van Sant:Distance. Future. It's where you might go if you walk in that direction. It's the end of the earth. I don't know how many things have been written about the horizon line; photographers are often dealing with the line, whether it's up by the top of the frame or in the middle or down below; it's a big issue if you're outside. You start to develop your own affinity for where it is. I don't know about its deep implications. But the middle is boring.
