A touching movie about two old friends getting older, and pre-fatherhood angst.
Movies tend to present the forest in one of two ways: a dense foreboding deathtrap for horny teenagers, or the utopian utopia from which all enlightenment arises, possibly delivered by 3-D blue people in search of nipples.
Old Joy—director Kelly Reichardt’s 2006 little-indie-that-could—is different. It perfectly captures the regenerative powers of a simple walk in the woods, why sometimes communing with the trees is exactly what the soul needs. It needn’t be anything elaborate, intense or life-altering. The movie isn’t about digging your own poophole in the backcountry. It’s about how a night of camping, a soothing mineral bath, a moonlight stroll through Central Park, or what your grandparents called a “country drive,” offers the mind a break from the realities at hand.
Based on co-screenwriter Jonathan Raymond’s short story of the same name, Old Joy is about an overnight trip in Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest taken by two friends, Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham). They haven’t seen each other in awhile, so Kurt suggests they hit up the Bagby Hot Springs, soothing natural baths tucked inside the Cascade Mountain Range. The meet up in Portland, drive to the woods, get lost, camp for the night, drink some beer, smoke some weed, have a relaxing soak, listen to some left-wing radio, and head back home.
Action is sparse in the movie, but that’s hardly the point. Mark clearly sees the forest for the trees; the end-of-the-world is coming in the form of a newborn. (As an impending father friend of mine put it, “To be truthful, I’m not excited. I’m nervous as fuck. I look at the high school kids smoking outside Kwik Way in black dusters and think that could be my kid.”)
Kurt isn’t as self-aware. The reefer takes care of the clarity, but he knows well enough that the “transformative” spiritual journey of an aging pothead means he’ll end up more forgotten loser than lovable Lebowski. Oddball singer-songwriter Oldham nails Kurt’s lack of vanity and off-putting insouciance. He doesn’t overplay the stoner shtick, and captures a dude who is staring down his 40s with his oldest friend, a bong he’s had since 1991.
To the filmmaker’s credit, we don’t learn much about Mark and Kurt’s friendship. Whether they grew up together, met in college, followed Phish in a VW van, were part of larger group of Portland barflies, or used to be true best friends, is known only to them. It doesn’t matter on this night, so why tell us? The events of Old Joy feel like they’re happening in real time, all the while Mark and Kurt both know things are changing, forever. If it’s the end of their world as they know it, why not down a few beers and stare at the stars for old time’s sake?
Reichardt’s pitch-perfect nothing-happens-but-everything-does vibe calls to mind another Pacific Northwest minimalist master, Raymond Carver. Unlike Carver’s typically doomed characters, however, Mark and Kurt are still being formed. Neither of them has gotten where they hope to be going. Kurt is obviously in greater danger of burning out completely, but Mark knows that parenthood also propagates its own form of fading away, where listening to Air America counts as fighting the power.
Kurt Cobain or Neil Young? Hey Hey, My My.
And yet, Old Joy is a speck in a lifetime. It’s sitting around a campfire shooting the shit. Damned if Mark and Kurt care about anything else while the flames are still burning and there’s a few Hamm’s left in the cooler. There are no big revelations, no “I’m Going to be a Father!” no admittance that the weed has won, not even a telltale sign that at the end of the getaway, they’re going their separate ways.
They are.
For now, there’s a dog, some herb, a little conversation, a step back from the world, a hot soak, and a reconnection with nature.
More than enough before it all washes away.
—Photo imdb.com
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