During the first campfire scene in Gus Van Sant's Gerry, Casey Afflect suddenly blurts out a stream of nonsensical trivia about an interactive game that won't make any sense to non-computer users though Matt Damon has no problem understanding Casey's out of context rambling. Similarly Matt had earlier described a moment that will only make sense to television viewers of Wheel of Fortune in one of the film's few dialogues. Playing very much like Beckett's Waiting for Godot, these two disjointed conversations point to Gerry's central idea—how two modern individuals have difficulty coping with the real world and relating to each other on anything but superficial levels despite inner longings.

Without much action and even less dialogue, Van Sant's experimental film certainly isn't for everyone. Indeed, just four people attended the screening I witnessed, and only two of us were left by the end. So, if you're looking for a more conventional film with plot and character development, you're better off opting for other fare. But those who are up for virtuoso camerawork and a uniquely meditative work will find pleasures in Gerry.

It reminds me in many ways of L'Avventura, as if we are following Anna after her disappearance. Like Antonioni, director Van Sant often communicates the emotional states of his characters through the changing Death Valley landscape and those ever present billowing clouds that he beautifully captures with his characteristic time lapse photography. Thus, the hapless pair of day hikers begin enthusiastically through the scrub brush, but refusing to follow the well worn tourist path, they wander through jagged rocks and increasingly hostile desertscapes that parallel their inner turmoil.

Without realizing the video game aspect alluded to in that initial campfire, viewers will see Gerry as illogical—and in a very real sense, it is. No one with any common sense would begin trekking across the barren wastelands that Matt and Casey tackle without food and water, but that's the point. Their reality has been internal and isolated—a television and computer generation gone off the deep end, thinking that they can plunge into this real life adventure and find the necessary resources along the way. They even survive the first surreal challenge when Casey gets stranded on top of a 15-foot boulder with no way down other than jumping.

Water becomes an immediate concern, so Casey uses his intuitive video game knowledge to find a probable location via animal tracks that should lead to the "mating ground" where water should be close by. Both urbanites are just getting themselves deeper into their own "gerry," their code name for a snafu as well as their fictional first names. While Casey continues his hopes of being a video game hero and locating water while Matt believes in his television universe where everything works out in the end—he wants none of Casey's crying.

Highlighting the improvisational film is the mesmerizing cinematography that remarkably tracks both actors in long, silent sequences and takes in the vast Desert Valley landscape like something out of Lawrence of Arabia. While most movies are filled with stimulation and camera movement, often Gerry visually fascinates in meditative silence—the variations in lighting and energetic clouds preach Nature's gospel that varies from hope, to turmoil, to hopelessness.

An especially well done sequence takes place when the camera slowly pans around Casey's frustrated and resigned face and continues circling around the mountainous terrain seamlessly, clearly tying the character's state with his overwhelming environmental situation. Words are unnecessary here, and soon complete helplessness and isolation become apparent as Matt and Casey trudge across a seemingly endless salt flat, accompanied by eerie lighting effects and other-worldly creaking sounds.

Critical reviews are destined to be all over the map on this film. While some will undoubtedly see Gerry as a failed pretentious and pointless film project, others will see Van Sant's latest as a bold experiment that veers abruptly away from his recent mainstream Finding Forrester. Although this film will never find the critical acceptance that My Private Idaho has achieved, it treads new ground and cannot be easily dismissed from memory—the final scenes alone are classic coffeehouse post-screening discussion starters. And that makes this collaborative effort worth viewing, even if half the audience leaves the theater.