Gus van Sant's Gerry is really not so bad. One can argue that it is his Stalker. Visual and soundscape-wise, the film delivers what was promised in My Own Private Idaho—van Sant's masterpiece starring Keanue Reeves and, maybe more importantly, the late River Pheonix: Avro Part's soundtrack and slow and long shots of North American deserts. Gerry is different from MOPI, however. It is much more basic, minimalist, slower (but faster). There is not much of a plot, in fact. It is the story of two friends, both named Gerry (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck), who are lost in the middle of a desert, walking around, endlessly, on and on, until they are exhausted.

They obviously don't want to die in the middle of the desert. Their perseverence, as well as our (viewers) assumptions about human beings, suggests that. But van Sant gives us no hint regarding why these two Gerry would want to continue to live. If we abandon the typical platitudes about human nature—that we don't want to die, we want to live, etc.—, we immediately realize that there is no reason for these two characters to live on. In fact, after awhile, given their lack of minimum responsibility in sticking around the pathway, one cannot help but think that these two handsome, but ultimately vacuous young men may have unconsciously wanted to loose their way in the middle of the desert.

As we watch their faces close-up, moving up and down, one on the forefront and the other in the background, for almost five minutes non-stop, we realize that their endless walk has no goal but only an aim. Homoerotics of this long shot stands out and, accordingly, this particular shot should be read as the key scene to understand the film. The disharmony of the up and down of these handsome faces could only be read as yet another way to remind us that "there is no sexual relationship" (J. Lacan). Their persistence, their endless walk, what seems like their drive to not to die is actually their willing walk towards death. Rather than confronting the impossibility of sexual relationship, they walk on and on. Their drive, death drive, to walk out of the desert is nothing but a defensive practice that enables them to evade confronting the truth of their desire. The walk around the void of the desert, round and round, until they exhaust themselves.

It may be too much of a stretch, but, this movie could not have been made in the seventies or in the eighties or even, maybe, in the nineties. Despite its lack of reference to contemporary social formation, one cannot help reading it as a critique of the hegemonic mode of subjectivation. The computer game that Affleck describes to Damon, a game which has family resemblance to "Civilization", is important as the only significant piece of conversation that they have which refers to the beyond of the desert. Much else, with the exception of their derision towards other "family-types" that are on the same track as they were in the very beginning of the movie, is about their journey. The computer game, as the single hook we have to get to know the characters and their subjectivity, is cruical. These two kids are the cynical subjects of late capitalism. They have no social project, no ideal, nor they are fully integrated into the system—they are apathetic. Their apathy is what makes one ask why they bother walking on? To ask this question, however, is precisely to fall into the trap of humanism. There could be many reasons for walking on—to assume that only those who have ideals, social projects, beliefs would walk is to neglect the role that jouissance plays in shaping who we are, our practices, our subjectivity.

These subjects, in order to evade any confrontation with the fact that they actually have no reason to continue to live, continue to walk on and on. Their search is defense mechanism. Their search is not really to find a way out; rather their perseverance is a way to evade to confront the void of their subjectivity. When I write, they evade confronting the impossibility of sexual relationship, i mean that they evade the impossibility of having a finalized and secure answer to the question of subjectivity within the symbolic order. Today, under late capitalism, one answer is to move on and on for the sake of moving on ("I shop therefore I am"), to enter into the deadly circuit of drive. In the past there were other answers: courtly love, the logic of desire, was one answer—the scenario of idealized woman-femme fatale-that can never be actualized, therefore we can justify the postponement forever... Today, in contrast, the answer is to place oneself into a track, and run and run. Not to postpone but to lock-in.

The beauty of Gerry is in its minimal analysis of this new mode of subjectivation: the logic of drive as the new defence mechanism. Probably, it is philosophically the most subtle film of the American independent renaissance.