Idyll Thoughts

Placid and profound, Old Joy is a quiet marvel.

by Sam Adams

Recommended

As fresh and revivifying as a blast of mountain air, Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy breezes into theaters that have not seen its like in years. Controlled yet casual, Reichardt's minimalist rendition of Jon Raymond's short story is a glancing revelation, as evanescent as a passing thought. But when it ends, quickly and a little abruptly, its spirit lingers, investing the world outside the theater with liquid clarity.

Read Sam Adams' interview with director Kelly Reichardt.  

Clarity of any kind is in short supply for Mark (Daniel London), an aging Portland hipster whose wife is about to give birth to their first child. The movie opens with the bong of a Buddhist prayer bowl ringing in the darkness, but as the lights come up on Mark sitting cross-legged in his backyard, he seems unable to block out the sounds of passing cars and chattering children, unable to find himself amidst the babble of the world. So when his old friend Kurt (Will Oldham) shows up in town looking for company on a camping trip, Mark jumps at the chance for a break from his life.

A shaggy, bearded dharma bum who seems to live in his beat-up van, Kurt is a self-styled free spirit whose every utterance walks a line between profound philosophy and utter bullshit. Campfire musings on quantum physics dissolve into stoner bromides, and his excited reminiscences of bonfires and drum circles evoke the urge to reach for the nearest blunt object. But you can see the tug of his rootless lifestyle on the all-too-rooted Mark, and every once in a while, Kurt gives voice to a truth so eloquently pure that even a seasoned cynic's defenses drop. As he and Mark make their way to a secluded hot spring, Kurt observes, "You don't get real quiet anymore."

Real quiet is Old Joy's nirvana, the state to which its miniaturist narrative ultimately aspires. Like Ozu's interstitial "pillow shots," the movie's frequent cutaways serve as a kind of subconscious rhythm, not-quite-still lifes of decaying power plants or sighing pines that act like harmonic overtones, spawning notes just beyond the edge of hearing. Much as it's meant to be watched or listened to, Old Joy is a movie to be felt, like a pulse beneath the skin. It's not accidental that when Mark discusses how he and his wife will adapt to being parents, he ventures, "We'll just find another rhythm."

If Mark is trying to reset his internal clock, Kurt is still dancing to the beat of a party that's long since ended. As he and Mark drive out to the woods, Kurt talks about selling off his long-dormant record collection (no doubt housed in his parents' garage) at their favorite record store, and Mark has to break the news that it's long since closed. On the last day, he says, in a phrase that will break any music fan's heart, "The only records left in the bins were our friends.'" (That the line as spoken collapses the distinction between their friends' unbought records and the friends themselves is especially poignant.) The details of Mark and Kurt's past lives are never spelled out, but you get the sense that Kurt sees himself as the keeper of the flame, while Mark has reluctantly put the past behind him.

Reichardt and Raymond, who adapted the film together, build shifting allegiances into their framework. At first, Mark seems somewhat pathetic, a washed-up, henpecked dishrag who secretly covets Kurt's no-strings lifestyle. But it becomes clear that Mark's accomplished more than he's let on, and that Kurt both admires and resents his friend's attachments. "You've really given back to the community," Kurt says, sounding genuinely awestruck, as if he'd never considered having a community to give back to.

It's possible to make too much of the Air America broadcasts that bracket the movie, enveloping Mark in a cloud of liberal malaise as he drives to and from his encounter with Kurt. Perhaps Mark's sense of dislocation and directionlessness is enhanced by living in a county that seems so palpably at war with itself. But it's doubtful he'd have been more at peace with himself with Kerry in the White House, even if he would have been able to drive to the store without raising his blood pressure. Like Mark and Kurt's past history, the movie's present-day context is sketched in brisk pencil lines, barely enough to give a sense of its contours.

If the movie has a failing, it's that Reichardt is so intent on not spelling things out that she risks falling into a whisper. There's something reactionary about its studious unstudiedness, as if Reichardt were afraid to do anything that might reek of drama. The monologue that eventually gives the movie its title begins as a rambling, distended anecdote that mainly feels like camouflage for its climactic statement of purpose (although if you want to push it far enough, you might see Kurt's shaggy-dog tale as a pot-fueled recasting of the Buddhist notion of recurrence). Like its characters, Old Joy seems slightly at war with its own nature, and so a little bit of the movie's song dies in its throat.

(sam@citypaper.net)

Old Joy

Directed by Kelly ReichardtA Kino releaseOpens Friday at Ritz Bourse