Old Joy

Thomas Wolfe’s prescient line “you can’t go home again” is clichéd beyond measure, but it still constitutes the quiet crux of Kelly Reichardt’s 2006 indie effort Old Joy. Running at a lean 76 minutes the flick is more an EP than an album, but still packs plenty of food for thought into its relative brevity. The plot centers on the reunion of two thirtysomething ‘slackers’ and the sobering realities that come to light with their renewed acquaintance.

Mark lives with his pregnant wife Tanya in Portland, Oregon. A quick succession of scenes suggests a marriage strained by impending responsibilities and Mark jumps at the phoned invitation to join his college friend Kurt on a camping trip in the Cascades. Clumsily negotiating permission from Tanya, he packs his gear and heads out to pick up his friend. Air America drones over the car radio, a loop of progressive opining that’s more background noise than engaging fodder for Mark’s mind.

Kurt’s situation seems suspect from the start as he meets Mark curbside outside a mutual friend’s house, a Red Flyer wagon with a TV in it inexplicably tow. Deftly deferring to Mark to drive, he also convinces him to make a pit stop to procure pot, even going so far as to hit him up for money to complete the transaction. Once on the road, Kurt regales Mark with tales of his counterculture adventures crisscrossing the country at drum circles and nature preserves, pausing in his monologues only to blaze up repeatedly.

Mark’s responding duplicity is subtle on the surface, but speaks volumes. He presents an engaged and supportive face to Kurt, but the edges of the façade peel back periodically, as when he vents passive frustration to his wife during several cell phone conversations out of earshot of his friend. These are two men that may have shared something in the past, but are now leagues apart. Each attempt by either to reconnect fails, frequently punctuating with a pregnant silence as when Mark recounts the miraculous recovery of his father from a brain ailment. Kurt focuses instead on earlier relayed information of parental infidelity, suggesting “it’s sort of like when an old Eskimo goes out on the ice to die” and missing the point of Mark’s story completely. The disparities in viewpoint are subtle, but indelible.

Things deteriorate as Kurt forgets the directions to the campsite and the two get lost. Pulling into a clearing at dusk they find an impromptu fire pit and pitch a tent. The night’s conversation, broken by target shooting at emptied beer cans, follows a similar script of dislocation and interpersonal distance. Kurt exhibits a rare moment of candidness, lamenting what he perceives is a disintegration of the friendship. Alarmed, Mark attempts to smooth things over with empty platitudes. Later, in a variation on the earlier car scene, Mark relates his efforts at building a community garden in his neighborhood. Kurt is complimentary, but Mark is quick to qualify his achievement so as to not offend or diminish his friend. Another uncomfortable silence follows.

The cinematography and languid pacing echo these themes of disassociation. Long tracking road shots scored with Yo La Tengo’s minimalist Ry Cooder-reminiscent music create a beautiful sense of ennui. Overcast Oregon skies accentuate the feeling. Once the men reach the wilderness the palette changes, with blue skies, white clouds and the deep mossy greens of the rainforest replacing early grays. The shift hints at some hope for the pair and a moment of offered connection and accompanying acquiescence, while fleeting, brings out the humanity in both men.

The film clicks with me because I’ve lived it, both the scenery and the situation, at least in part. Many have. Time and geography have a habit of eroding and calcifying relationships. Decorum is not a means of repair. Reichardt and her actors relate these themes in such an understated way that it’s easy to dismiss the film as slow and pretentious. To the receptive viewer though, the potential faults resonate as memorable strengths.