OLD JOY (2006)

 
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 6:49 pm    Post subject: OLD JOY (2006) Reply with quote

I was struck by how much the two characters–Kurt and Mark–reminded me of Henry Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. In the 1970s (or maybe earlier, maybe back in the 1950s, with James Dean, followed by the Beats) young people, especially young men, liked to adopt a cool demeanor. They stood out by not standing out. They were oh-so-relaxed, unruffled, calm, as if they were in touch with an inner source of serenity that was absolutely unperturbable. They were quiet, slow, deliberate–and you could imagine them going to the woods because they wanted to live deliberately, like Thoreau. Or they wanted to live free and on the road–like Jack Kerouac, like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, or for that matter like the narrator of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Cynics might say that the quietness, which might or might not conceal deep philosophical reflections, is an easily adopted pose and that those who adopt it might be doing so for the wondrous effect of it as a way to attract admirers….

Anyway, in Kurt and Mark, but especially Mark, we have one of these quietly unreactive beings who seem unflappable. And he has a long-term admirer in his old friend Kurt, with whom he arranges to go on a camping trip to the Oregon mountains at Bagby Hot Springs near Estacada.

We first see Mark in his marriage. His wife is apparently expecting their baby at any minute and can’t go along on the camping trip. She accepts the arrangement Mark has made without rancor, merely pointing out that in her condition a camping trip isn’t advisable.

When Mark leaves, we catch a glimpse of another woman–probably a neighbor–mowing the grass.

Mark rides off and picks up his old friend Kurt, who is constantly smoking pot and doesn’t mind borrowing some money from Mark to buy some for the trip. It is clear that these two have been good friends and housemates in the past, and Mark trots out what is probably a bong that he has saved from those days. Kurt lets Mark know that he’s still part of the nomadic life they used to share–he’s recently been to Arizona and Big Sur, he’s evidently in danger of being evicted from the house he’s in. He manages things so that they take Mark’s car instead of his–with Mark doing all the driving.

The entire movie is devoted to this two-day trip, and in the course of it Kurt seems to be trying to win back Mark’s friendship–even to the point of representing himself as something of a genius. He’s taken some physics classes but “I knew more than they did.” He has a theory of the universe as a falling tear dropping through space. On hearing this, Mark just gives one of his enigmatic half-smiles while staring at nothing in particular. He is always the observer, just a little bit separated from the scene, and this detachment seems to drive Kurt on to more desperate measures.

At one point Mark says, “Everything’s about looking cool.” He means this to be semi-critical of other people but it could also apply to himself. His beverage container has the slogan, “Whatever happened, I didn’t do it.” His separateness is almost his only distinguishing trait. We find out that he has a father who’s been ill. He gets a few calls from his wife en route. He talks about a job he has volunteering with kids. But that is all we know.

Otherwise, he’s just laid back, with a faintly knowing smile on his face and a somewhat distant look in his eyes.

Kurt, meanwhile, even talks in detail about his dreams. He may be taking Mark’s general uncommunicativeness as an openness to his stream-of-consciousness rambling, almost as if he sees Mark as an amateur therapist.

When these attempts at intimate revelations don’t get anywhere, Kurt uses the opportunity created by the bathing situation to impose a massage on his friend. He doesn’t ask him beforehand. He just starts in–and continues, in spite of Mark’s startled reaction. It almost looks as if Mark is going to ask him to stop but, true to his laid-back character, he doesn’t. Though this would have been the moment for Mark to react to something that borders on an invasion of his personal space, he refuses to set any boundaries. But we have seen that he’s not quite as unflappable as he seems.

As the story unfolds, with very little happening, Kurt turns out to be a genuinely decent guy. He gives money to a panhandler even though he probably has very little money himself. He tells of an incident involving a pedestrian he almost ran into and how guilty he felt. This is a very sensitive man who is feeling more and more lonely as time goes by and old friends have drifted away.

We don’t see much kindness in Mark. He’s not cruel but he is distant. If he’s so determined to shut down the connection with Kurt (without a clean break) as he seems, why did he agree to go on the trip at all? No hint of any further association between the two is suggested by their casual parting words.

It is Mark’s wife who has been left alone for a couple of days–alone with the housework, possibly the grass-cutting too–while her husband is off drinking soft drinks, eating ready-made food and enjoying the hot springs and scenery with his dog and his old friend, taking a leisurely stroll through the woods and indulging in philosophical musings.

The women who have the babies and do the housework don’t usually have time for such activities. The movie isn’t making that point–it isn’t making any point–but it may be very delicately implied. On the face of it the movie is just presenting how these two young men chose to spend a couple of days, but it is also presenting a great deal more.

Old Joy is also almost a travelogue for the Portland region, complete with a closeup of an especially glistening slug. At one point a neon sign in the shape of an outline of the state reads MADE IN OREGON, and the product being advertised is OLD TO—, perhaps a beer or a tobacco but the name is close enough to OLD JOY, it seems to me.

A keen observer has noted that Kurt and Mark are shown pumping their own gas, which wouldn’t happen in Oregon. Oops! The movie gets points taken off in the verisimilitude department.

The photography is stunning and shows the Pacific Northwest as it is, without prettying it up. And the movie says what it has to say sensitively and nonjudgmentally. It isn’t a story with a plot but is more of a study of the interaction between the two characters. Their every remark and facial expression, the changes in their tone of voice, deserve our attention if we are to understand them.
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