Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006)

Two old friends (Daniel London and Will Oldham) reconnect and go off on a camping trip.

Over a decade after River of Grass, Kelly Reichardt finally got her sophomore feature.

In the period in between, she had made a couple of short films, which I have not seen.

After a debut based on a near-constant inner monologue, Old Joy presents the opposite proposition - a nearly wordless travelogue where the characters do manage to get away.

The movie character is at point of transition - he is about to become a father.

His friend Kurt (Oldham) has persevered on his own path, while he has plugged into societal expectations.

When we meet him, he is listening to liberal talkback radio - he is still following the world through a certain frame, but without the radical decoupling his friend has undergone.

There is a sense that Kurt’s self-improvement is cover for a form of arrested development.

The movie is an ellipses - the lack of interiority turns the whole movie into an exercise in the Kuleshov effect, as the viewer is forced to use every glance, breath and mumbled phrase to fill out and read into these characters and their relationship.

Tonally, it feels closer to Certain Women in its quiet, and focus observing characters in specific spaces.

 

There is no plot - it is just two friends on a camping trip, ignoring the gulf that now exists between them.

I did find it a little tough to stay engaged with this one.

It almost feels like a deliberate experiment in making a movie that inverts the style and presentation of her debut.

Instead of divining meaning from the disconnect between the narrator’s inner thoughts and actions, we have to discern a person from their actions (or lack thereof).

There is something poignant about the characters’ disconnect, and Reichardt’s minimalist approach means that I spent the latter parts of the film imposing my own memories and experiences onto the characters.

There is something relatable about the characters’ lack of communication and lack of resolution. There is nothing dramatic or cathartic to be found.

Reichardt is not worried about spelling anything out, and that mystery provides space for the audience to contemplate the themes that come out of that space - the nature of friendship, the effect of time and age on relationships.

That space is intriguing, but in this particular case, not as intriguing as some of Reichardt’s later works.

Related

River of Grass

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