Old Joy

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ****½

There's something about Kelly Reichardt's minimalist film Old Joy that puts one at ease, as if reminding us that there are places we can go - mentally as well as physically - to take some comfort in a world that's essentially gone insane.

Old Joy's plot is hardly enough to hang one's hat on - two old friends connect for an overnight camping trip and a search for a hidden hot springs - but needless to say, the plot is not the thing here. Actor-musician Will Oldham (whose unique, haunting singing voice has garnered him global recognition) plays Kurt, a drifter who drifts back to Portland, Oregon, and looks up his friend Mark (the willowy Daniel London). While Mark is on the precipice of a more domestic life - his wife is pregnant - Kurt is clearly more frail, child-like, but both men are grappling with their roles in an increasingly alienating world. It's to the film's great credit that both characters feel immediate, like people we know - or maybe even are - even if the actors are not completely polished. Their conversations together as they wander around the Cascade Mountains serve as the spine of the film. With the confines of the story comes an intimacy rarely achieved; even rarer, for American films at least, to see that intimacy expressed between two men. While it's of that uniquely American genre, the road movie, Old Joy is more European in sensibility.

The hypnotic soundtrack is provided by Yo La Tengo, the multifaceted trio who can go loud and go very soft with equal skill and whose music often feels like the score to everyone's internal road trip; here, appropriately enough, they go quiet. Some of the film's audio is also provided by a progressive radio talk show Mark listens to in the car when alone (interestingly, he turns it off when Kurt is with him - they are their own talk show); it seems odd to hear the left-leaning rants of an Air America radio host coming, when most of the AM radio soundscape in reality is provided by the right, but it doesn't much matter; the anger at the state of the nation expressed by the host reflects that of the rest of us, and adds to the film's political mood.

The film is based on a very short story by Jonathan Raymond, and co-adapted for the screen with Reichardt (whose first feature was the sly, neglected indie River of Grass), and while it has certainly been expanded visually from the page (with moment after moment of beauty captured in surroundings - from dark off-roads to road side gas station - with landscape expressing loss), Old Joy shares the short story form's way of honing on the minute, in the basic moments that can also reflect a larger notion. Then, when the two men reach their destination, the characters have a surprising, subtle, if possibly temporary, shift in power, reflected with a most touching physical gesture.

Oldham was actually an actor before he was a musician, first making a splash as a preaching adolescent in John Sayles' coal mining saga Matewan, and here his scruffy hippie is achingly real, teetering in his own cosmic space, trudging on uneasily while an uncomfortable Mark nods supportively. Oldham's pot-tinged philosophical ramblings are both respected here and humorous; Reichardt and Raymond never judge their characters. It's interesting how even in a film as subtle as this one, the ending can be interpreted as upbeat or downbeat, depending I suppose on how one squints at it. Kurt is on the urban streets, alone, but alive and kicking forward. Is he doomed, or a survivor? However one interprets it, if ever a film could be called restorative, Old Joy is it.

The film may seem unambitious to some, but in its sweet 73 minutes accomplishes much more spiritually than any American film this year.