Gerry: Movies Minute by Minute (Timecodes) - Softcover

Rombes, Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501399713 ISBN 13: 9781501399718

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025

Synopsis

A minute-by-minute analysis of Gus Van Sant film, Gerry (2002).

Blending film criticism with creative nonfiction, each book in the Timecodes series focuses on one film, exploring it minute by minute beginning with minute one, and ending with the final minute before the closing credits.

In the canon of director Gus Van Sant's films, Gerry (2002) stands out as a singular work, a boldly experimental film that nonetheless is accessible, darkly humorous, and profound. Gerry: Minute by Minute is a non-traditional critical study of this film, a bold, impressionistic series of vignettes that circle around questions which are highly specific to Gerry itself but which are also universal: what is it about certain works of art-films, books, paintings, music-that attach themselves to us so that we carry them with us on our journey through life? What does it mean to walk with these works inside us, as if they are a part of us?

The book's structure unfolds chronologically along with the film, with one moment from each of the film's 100 minutes serving as the basis for the chapters. Each of the 100 vignette chapters takes on topics ranging from the particulars of the film itself, including: the inventive use of camera movement and sound; the productive nature of collaboration; the driving themes and philosophies that inform the film; the blistering heat, in Death Valley, of its production; the place of Gerry in American cinema and its European influences, especially Béla Tarr; the impact of 9-11 on the cultural landscape of 2001-02, when Gerry was filmed and released; and what it means to “walk” with a film or a book, carrying it our heads as it informs who we are, often in subtle ways invisible to those around us.

About this title

About the Authors

Nicholas Rombes is a professor of English at the University of Detroit Mercy, USA. His books include Ramones (Continuum, 2005), New Punk Cinema (2005), and Cinema in the Digital Age (2017). He has written for Exquisite Corpse, McSweeney's online, and CTheory.

Nadine Boljkovac is Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, USA. She is the author of Little Women (2019) (Bloomsbury, forthcoming) and Untimely Affects: Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema (2013; 2015), examining Alain Resnais's & Chris Marker's works. Writing appears in Camera Obscura; Cineaste; The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory; The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda; Studies in European Cinema; Screening the Past; Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text, and others.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501399713
• ISBN 13: 9781501399718
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104