Old Joy

In my mind, there are 2 ways to fully understand this film and it all depends which character relates to your own life the most. And that is as simple as it gets.

1. you're a "Mark". The friend that has matured, has a career & a family, left his carefree overindulgent days behind them and who doesn't have enough time for the friendships you once had.

2. you're a "Kurt". The friend who hasn't figured out what they want to do with their life just yet, living very sparsely, still doing the same irresponsible things they were in their twenties and really can't grasp that their friend they used to be really close to has other responsibilities.

On that basis alone, the "Marks" tend to appreciate the film more, while the "Kurts" tend to dismiss it rather quickly. Speaking from experience, the film hit a little too vlose to home. But as a "recovering Kurt", it was an absolute eye-opener. So I'm definitely in the minority by saying this film touched me in a profound way and made me really take a look at my own closest friendships. I can't think of another film that has made me do that. And all the while being the simplest of stories. Bravo.

I had no idea what this film was about other then the short description in the Cable Guide. I anticipated smaller version of the buddy-film genre and figured if it wasn't worth watching it would get erased after 10 minutes. But I was drawn in within that first 10 minutes. Perhaps not everyone will understand the film, as some of the other comments posted here suggest. But if you have ever had a good friend and lost them to time this is a bittersweet retelling of that tale. It's true the dialog is sparse but that is because to make it more specific and verbose would not let the viewer blend what's happening in the film with what has happened in their own life, it would just be another impersonal film about others. To those of us who have been there, we are part of this film.

This is a movie where nothing at all happens. Surprisingly that's not a really bad thing. It is the story of a short dull road trip between two old friends. Two old friends that have nothing to say to each other.

Even though this movie is only about 70 minutes long, there is a still lot of filler. The filler is pretty and quiet in a mellow sort of way. Yo La Tengo's sparse soundtrack goes perfect with the lack of dialog and lack of action. Somehow it actually sort of works.

But I got a real sense of missed opportunity with this film. The filmmaker seems to have nothing to say. While amazingly well executed, there is no real depth to this film. Maybe that's the point. Even if, it felt like it needed more.

It is a nice film to watch if you find yourself in a mellow mood. It's like watching the scenery go by from a train. If you feel like a train ride, this is a pleasant one.

In Kelly Reichart's Old Joy, two thirty-something males who live in the Pacific Northwest reunite for a day-and-a-half trip by car and on foot to a hot spring in Oregon's Cascade Mountains and discover some hours of peace and mutual solitude. It seems that the years have separated them. Once great friends, they haven't been in touch for a while. They aren't the same guys they were and perhaps haven't much in common any more. The stocky, balding, bearded, single Kurt (Will Oldham) is a semi-hippie living marginally who smokes a lot of grass. Mark (Daniel London) is thin and married and both he and his pregnant wife work hard at their jobs. But Reichart is too unemphatic, and her understated dialogue is too naturalistic, for this implied discovery of lost friendship to have any drama, or for the differences between the two men to have any clear point. This is good film-making, but it seems almost at cross purposes with itself.

The colors are rich, the camera is precise, the sounds are finely recorded. The trip is meticulously observed. Reichart sees her little piece of ivory through a magnifying glass. The way Mark and Kurt talk seems authentic and true. They don't present back-stories, because it wouldn't be natural for them to do so -- though Kurt acknowledges Mark's daring in having a child; he says he's never done anything so "real." Mark's wife, glimpsed before the trip and overheard in cell phone conversations, seems neurotic, insecure about this dip back into Mark's pre-marital world. She may understandably feel jealous of the way, when Kurt calls and suggests the trip, Mark comes hopping.

They take Mark's better car, an old Volvo station wagon, and Kurt's directions lead them astray so at night they have to camp by what looks a bit like a dump, not really knowing exactly where they are. There's nothing to give away here. The two guys make the trip. They make it with Lucy, Mark's dog, up to the hot spring the next afternoon. And the rustic shelter set up there for bathing is as Kurt had promised, simple and lovely. Kurt has said there's not much difference between city and country now but this peaceful place belies that notion, except that when they return, their parting is quick, and Kurt is soon out and about by himself in a sleazy part of town and Mark is heading home with an Air America political talk show tuned in again just as it was when he headed out to get Kurt.

The irony is that all this meticulous observation reveals very little. When it's over, we don't know much about who these two men are. We don't know how they knew each other when younger or for how long; We don't know what Mark's job is. And it is not clear that they find each other boring, because they haven't said a lot to each other. Mark has talked a little about his father, and Kurt has told a long story at the hot spring about shopping for a notebook and a dream he just had that provides the title. In his dream a woman told Kurt that "sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy." Is the joy of Mark and Kurt's old friendship worn out and turned to sorrow? NYTimes critic Manohla Dargis, who wrote this week that this is "one of the finest American films of the year," says that at their parting, "from the way Kurt looks at Mark, it seems clear he knows there won't be another reunion." Seems, perhaps; but it isn't really clear. And this is the weakness of Reichart's understated method: it's so subtle, and in its construction so minimal, it risks not really saying anything. Nature and the urban world speak clearly in Reichart's film, but there's a substratum of feeling and experience that finds no voice.

Shown at various film festivals, including San Francisco, and released in Portland, Oregon in August and New York City (Film Forum) in September 2006.

Two old friends meet up to visit a hot spring out in the woods and spend a night camping out in Oregon. There's no incident or thrill to be found in this slight piece and the viewer's enjoyment depends as much on what they may bring to the film as to what the film delivers. We learn very little about the character's back-story and this allows the viewer to meditate on their own lost friendships and on life's small disappointments.

Old Joy is one of those films that celebrates the small moments in life; the transcendent beauty of nature, the sudden realisation that this is all there is. Old Joy feels like an old friend with its comfortable silences and gentle humour and its worth taking the trip with this film.