"The film is beautiful, with absolutely stunning desert photography. Yes it is slow-paced, but there definitely IS a story, and there IS character development, and there are even some surprisingly funny moments in the first half. There's no way around it - people will either love this film or hate it. But if you can slow yourself down to the pace of the long, long tracking shots it becomes hypnotic and extremely moving, as the Damon and Affleck characters confront the terror of their situation.

Van Sant was at the screening and took questions afterwards. He said the project originated from a true story that Matt Damon told him, about two guys who got lost in the desert. He said the shoot took 26 days and they shot the scenes in sequence, improvising around the basic outline of the story. He also said he went into the project with the idea of making it more like a John Cassavetes (sp?) film, with much more dialogue. But in the end he felt the story should be told visually rather than with too many words. He also said that he must have known before-hand that there would be some very long shots because he took 500 yards of dolly track into the desert with him!

He mentioned Andrei Tarkovsky as an influence, and the Hungarian director Bela Tarr (who actually gets a thank-you in the closing credits.) One other funny thing he said was that before starting Gerry he had been playing a lot of Tomb Raider, for another project, and some of the P-O-V tracking shots of the desert were influenced by the video game!

Anyway, those are my first impressions - hope that helps. Hope you get to see Gerry as I just did, on a really BIG screen!"