OLD JOY

I saw OLD JOY through the Three Rivers Film Festival as the front-end of a double feature with CLIMATES. I think it's an impressive film, and I'd like to see the rest of Kelly Reichardt's work.

To its credit, OLD JOY is not terribly preoccupied with plot. It follows two men-- Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham)-- who take a weekend camping trip to some remote hot springs. Both men are wrestling with adulthood, albeit in different forms, and their friendship (which seems to have originated in college or thereabouts) has faded over time and as a result of their varying stations. Kurt is an unreconstructed hippie; he talks a little about some ongoing schooling and mentions that he doesn't expect to be allowed to live in his house for much longer. When he calls Mark to ask him to go on the trip, Mark seems ambivalent. He'd like to have a weekend away from his pregnant wife, but solicits her permission so as not to appear too eager. The men intended to drive Kurt's shag-carpeted van to the mountains, but settle instead on Mark's more reliable Volvo wagon. Mark's dog comes along on the trip.

The two men start out on their journey, get lost along the way, ask for directions and finally find the place they're looking for-- hot springs reachable after a lengthy hike through the forest. But the act of reaching the hot springs, and the physical sensation of being in the springs, is of lesser significance than the insights into each of the characters picked up along the way.

The trappings of Mark's comparative stability-- the wife with child, the newish car, the talk of a community program he has started-- are the outwards symbols of the divergent ends the friends have chosen, but they're ultimately unnecessary in telling us that these two have less in common than they once did. When Mark and Kurt talk about things, past or present, there's an undercurrent of inequality, as if what Mark regards with a fond but faraway remembrance is still present-tense for Kurt. As Mark and Kurt walk though the backdrop of lush forests that remain unchanged by time, their routine and destination is the same as it presumably was a decade ago, but they're not. There's still the common interest of the springs and the hike, but not much else. The divide is generally played out quietly, with jokes or remarks that seem to be offered plaintively and responded to politely. In keeping with the film's understatement, no attempt is made to plumb the depths of their difference, or to talk things out and relentlessly hammer home the obvious. They've just changed. At one point things do bubble up suddenly, as Kurt tries to rub Mark's bare shoulder while Mark lies in a spring. It's a friendly gesture, meant to show how much Kurt wants Mark to be relaxed, but the intimacy necessary to pull off something like that is long since gone, and it comes off as creepy, with Mark responding angrily.

The title comes from a line in the film which defines sorrow as used-up joy. When the men get back to town, they return to the lives that divide them. Reichardt's subtlety holds at this important moment, and she resists giving us the scene where Mark settles into bed with his wife, hand resting on her pregnant belly and faithful dog at the foot of the bed. It is enough, way enough, to see Kurt not long after he is dropped off meandering around outside a store, fumbling into one ambiguous social encounter or another, searching for the sort of fellowship that can't be revived even by walking together through the world's beauty.