Artificial reality I Imagine this: I saw Gerry at the 2003 Vienna International Film Festival. It started at midnight, I had seen three other films before the same day, and I was completely exhausted. And though these are not the best prerequisites for liking this film, I enjoyed it all over. I loved it. I felt inspired and enlightened, yet not particularly awake after those 103 minutes. Gerry is a perfect, never expected mix of absurdity, surrealism and hardcore realism. It is a wonderful evidence that artificial works can indeed have a realistic aspect. When I read that Arvo Pärt, the composer of the Gerry soundtrack is also responsible for the music in Carlos Reygadas's Japan I was not surprised. The two films have very much in common but I prefer Gerry because it does not at all try to be clever. It gives us a couple of riddles to solve but there are no solutions and there is no ending except maybe the natural one: death. There are various issues and messages that can be read in Gerry (and in the various reviews and comments written about it). Reading some of them, Van Sant, Damon and Affleck will possibly have a good laugh. I decided to see Gerry mainly as a personal adventure movie. Yes, really. When I was camping in Iceland last year, one day I got lost in the highways together with two friends. Soon we ran out of water and it took us hours till we found our way back. The fact of getting lost in the deserts was quite exciting on the one hand, on the other hand the day was quite monotonous and really painful. Most of the time we didn't talk, and sometimes we talked about trivial things. We were walking and walking and walking. Just like Gerry and Gerry. For me this is the most purely BEAUTIFUL film of the century.