If we go back to the question of "what is art", it is somewhat similar to the ultimate philosophical question of life "who am I", and naturally it cannot be explained in one or two sentences. Faced with this problem, everyone will naturally have their own definitions or standards. In Susan Sontag's view, art should not be an assistant to the truth. Its purpose is to provide an experience, not a statement or an answer. Meyer Darren, who was about the same time, also described her artistic concept in her own article. Unlike Sontag, Meyer has another identity, an experimental film director. This identity is very important for further understanding Maya's artistic concept and understanding the film "Gary". The godmother of American experimental cinema felt that a truly creative work of art was never a mere communicative expression (depicting, conveying an existing, explicit reality), but a creation of a reality, and itself constituted a kind of Experience, I guess this may be the reason why Maya chooses experimental films as a way of expression, which may be more able to get to where she wants to be than experimental films of feature films. In this sense, "Gary" is indeed like a popular experimental film (in a narrow sense). For Maya, the language of the film is crucial. Whether it is Sontag or Mayer, in their "tacit understanding"-like views, they both point to two words: the experience of art.
At 103 minutes, "Gary" tells the story of two men who get lost on a hike and start looking for a way back, through mountains and deserts to a salty land where one of the men "leaves" ”, while another man found the road a few hundred meters away, and the loss and recovery happened almost simultaneously. There are only two characters with the same name (Gary) and one common action (walking) in the whole film, and even the music is the most simplistic treatment, making the film almost abstract. Van Sant and the others tried to strip away everything that could easily affect the audience, so that the audience could not help but automatically give meaning to the movie paragraphs during the viewing process. First, they removed the large time coordinate. In this movie, in addition to being able to judge day and night, dusk, And noon, and did not explain the specific age. At the same time, the identities of the characters are also erased, leaving only two names. No one knows where the two characters come from, what jobs they do, what they have experienced, and what their relationship is. The plot is also largely eliminated here, with two Garys getting lost on a hike and then looking for their way back, with almost zero plot throughout, some episodes that seem to turn or hinder , also just flashed by without bringing about any change in character behavior, like the big rock that Cassie Affleck (one of the Garys) climbed on, which seemed like an obstructive design, we might even expect The plot changes, but nothing happens. Casey Affleck didn't know how to climb up, and then miraculously landed safely. After watching the entire movie and looking back at this scene, you will find that this is simply a piece of idle writing. more plots) also had no effect. In addition, there is another place where the two Garys are going to quarrel when things are going very badly. The result is also resolved by the author in two sentences of "fuck you", nothing happened, and they continue to move on. Simultaneously simplified, there is also the language of the characters. My favorite part is precisely the moment when two people have only action and no words, long takes that almost make people impatient, but also seems to have a kind of magic that attracts people who stop their eyes there. Words are superfluous to the déjà vu of emotions and situations.
After stripping everything off as much as possible, what remains is only a general story frame (mainly an action) as a support, and what Van Sant really wants to do is to maximize the language of the film to reach the audience as much as possible. Pure communication. It may not be appropriate to understand this, but it may be easier to understand Van Sant's approach in analogy to what abstraction initially attempted to do in the realm of painting. In the view of abstract art, the subject matter of a painting affects the viewer's true appreciation of the charm of this art form. When experiencing the charm of painting itself, the viewer's attention is first attracted by "what is painted" gone, so it is necessary to remove the subject matter. As one of the pioneers of abstraction, Kandinsky's analogy was actually music. There is no subject, but there is emotion, and emotion means experience, and experience can theoretically reach all people. Van Sant's genius is also in "removal". If we say that when we watch a movie, we will be judged differently for the event itself, and the audience will be divided into different groups, and it is easier to empathize with the characters in the movie who have similar experiences, while Van Sant The action they retained (walking or finding a way home) looks very concrete, but it is actually abstract. The meaning of the action of walking itself is infinitely rich, and it is enough to reach everyone.
With setting, it is the expression of language. On the whole, I think Van Sant has achieved a natural stylization, a natural reality that is closer to reality than reality, and here I will only mention the one that I feel the most deeply. The most long shots in the whole film are so long that it is easy to lose patience, interspersed with many quiet but rapidly changing natural scenes, day and night alternate, the two Gary walk non-stop in nature, from Step lightly until faltering. Of all the walking sequences, two of them are my favorite. One is in the middle of the film. The two people did not speak, but just walked. In the picture are two faces that are walking, almost overlapping. This segment lasts for four minutes. The other is the passage of the saline-alkali land. The two Garys have been walking for too long at this time, and they are almost on the edge of the limit of life. At this time, the two people are moving with weak strength in the dawn, and we are Only two silhouettes, one large and one small, can be seen, and this paragraph lasts six minutes. It is these ordinary-looking long shots that are precisely one of the most important elements of the "experience" offered by this film. Often only a single action is retained in a long shot. If you can associate it, this is actually the way many experimental films are made. Such processing generally has two effects, one is that the audience falls asleep based on a loss of patience, and the other is that we seem to enter the situation through a visual excursion. Experiencing (as a verb) is probably the only way to get into this film: to leave the present reality of one's own existence, to truly believe in that reality, and with a childlike ignorance, naivety, pure mind and not to do Accept anything expectantly, throw yourself into it. In this sense, Van Sant's film requires a lot of initiative from the audience in order to achieve effective communication. This kind of treatment was actually given at the beginning. The first five minutes and thirty seconds of the film, although it was a long shot, but based on only one action, it can be regarded as a long shot:
The two Garys were driving down the mountain road, and Appawater's music played at the same time, leading us to the experience itself.
Ps: "Gary" is the second in the series of GVS works I have watched. I don't know much about Van Sant's other works. I only talked about some of my feelings about some of the contents of this movie. If there are any mistakes , please correct me.
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