I rented Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy (2006)after hearing an interview with her on NPR this week. It is a short, quiet film, which is good enough, but the film is suggestive in ways that you hardly ever find in film in this country. For reference points, you need to turn to masters of giving weight to quotidian concerns such as Rohmer and Olmi.
Will Oldham and Daniel London play two old friends who go for a hike in the Cascade mountains, looking for a lost hot spring. That's the plot. The film's dramatic moments are lyrical; the characters struggle with the minor but significant concern of ferreting out emotional stability during a transformative period in their lives.
Oldham's Kurt remains committed to a countercultural lifestyle while London's Mark is leaving that world behind: he has moved on to concerns about family, property, and career and not in any cartoonish way.
In the opening scenes, we find Mark asking his wife permission to go on the search, and we sense both his unwillingness to put aside the responsibilities of the house, but also his diminishing reluctance to permanently sever the bonds of deep friendship. When Kurt later that evening, stoned and drunk, finally admits that he senses this distance, and that it saddens him, Mark is once again confronted with a seemingly impossible choice: we cannot hold to contractory ideals about freedom and commitment. When Kurt rambles on with a bizarre theory about physics, you see Mark is ready to move on. He is annoyed at the stoner talk, and that he is aware of the intellectual weakness and immaturity of his old friend. However, Reichardt and co-author Jonathan Raymond, are too insightful to let this stand. The hot spring lies ahead.
The tension between the two is subtly handled, and London is masterful at getting you to sense his confusion from a nearly expressionless face.
Reichardt's new film, Wendy and Lucy, received excellent reviews and is not playing anywhere. Oldham's new album, Beware, is not out yet.
Will Oldham and Daniel London play two old friends who go for a hike in the Cascade mountains, looking for a lost hot spring. That's the plot. The film's dramatic moments are lyrical; the characters struggle with the minor but significant concern of ferreting out emotional stability during a transformative period in their lives.
Oldham's Kurt remains committed to a countercultural lifestyle while London's Mark is leaving that world behind: he has moved on to concerns about family, property, and career and not in any cartoonish way.
In the opening scenes, we find Mark asking his wife permission to go on the search, and we sense both his unwillingness to put aside the responsibilities of the house, but also his diminishing reluctance to permanently sever the bonds of deep friendship. When Kurt later that evening, stoned and drunk, finally admits that he senses this distance, and that it saddens him, Mark is once again confronted with a seemingly impossible choice: we cannot hold to contractory ideals about freedom and commitment. When Kurt rambles on with a bizarre theory about physics, you see Mark is ready to move on. He is annoyed at the stoner talk, and that he is aware of the intellectual weakness and immaturity of his old friend. However, Reichardt and co-author Jonathan Raymond, are too insightful to let this stand. The hot spring lies ahead.
The tension between the two is subtly handled, and London is masterful at getting you to sense his confusion from a nearly expressionless face.
Reichardt's new film, Wendy and Lucy, received excellent reviews and is not playing anywhere. Oldham's new album, Beware, is not out yet.
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