"So, you looking forward to fatherhood?"
"Yeah. Sure. We're both stretched so thin at work, it's almost impossible to imagine, but it'll have to work itself out. We'll just find another rhythm, do whatever it is people do."
"It's so fucking brave, man. I've never gotten myself into anything I couldn't get myself out of. It's just — having a kid, it's so fucking for real!"
"Yeah."
In director Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy, two old friends briefly reunite for a trip into the country, an attempt both to take a break from the tensions of their current lives and perhaps to recapture something that was lost between them quite a while back. Old Joy is a splendid collaboration between a female director (Reichardt made River of Grass), a male writer (short story by Jonathan Raymond) and two very brave actors, Will Oldham and Daniel London, with a vital supporting appearance by Tanya Smith.
In Act One, we see Mark (London) accept an invitation from Kurt (Oldham) to visit a country hot springs, which he joyfully accepts after a bit of verbal jousting with his very pregnant wife, Tanya (Smith). The filmmakers allow you to assign different weight to the wife's apprehensive body language as she overhears the incoming phone message. As with many scenes in this deceptively blissful road movie, you may or may not have a different impression of the emotional stakes for all three characters on a second viewing.
As Mark waits on the porch of the house he believes to be Kurt's current residence, he notices his old friend approaching pulling a little red wagon containing an old TV. Driving over in his Volvo station wagon, Mark is bathed in liberal talk radio. The fact that the debut of Old Joy coincides with the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Air America is a nice satiric boost for the filmmakers, who have found the neatest way to employ radio as a character in a story since Todd Field's expressive use of Midnight Baseball as a grief note and a bad omen for the third act of In the Bedroom.
As the radio fades out on the outskirts of Portland, Kurt and Mark are left with catch-up small talk. There's a restaurant pit-stop (a nice joke about how one orders toast doesn't match Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, but does effectively signal just how far the old friends have drifted); Mark's leash is jerked by cell phone calls from Tanya; we wonder if Kurt really knows where they're going; there's a great guy-moment guzzling Hamm's beer around a campfire; and finally, Mark and Kurt arrive at perhaps the most off-the-beaten-track hot springs in Ecotopia.
We sense that half a lifetime ago, these now-30something men were quite closely matched in terms of what they wanted from life and the company they would keep. Now that they're alone in adjoining hot tubs, we speculate on just how much they can still share. As Mark innocently observes, "It makes you wonder how long ago 16 was."
Extremely close
Daniel London as Mark has the beautifully elongated facial features of the subject of an old Flemish painting. The briefest glimmer of joy or apprehension is lovingly communicated in director of photography Peter Sillen's use of expressive close-ups. Seldom has a man been observed from moment to moment simultaneously so at ease and so tense in a hot tub next to another man. London is particularly adept at hinting at powerful emotions with a glance.
Will Oldham is just as skilled at seeing that his balding, bearded countenance, the very symbol of an unmoored homeless man, doesn't stack the deck in our view of which guy we're pulling for, or whether we think these fellows should be alone together.
The actors come from widely disparate walks of life — London has the more mainstream résumé (opposite Robin Williams in Patch Adams), while Oldham has followed his remarkable screen debut as the boy preacher in John Sayles' Matewan with a successful counterculture music career. It is a tribute to both that they allow us to enjoy the trip more than the characters seem to.
At movie's end, after the old friends have parted, Mark is again secure in his Volvo, Air America filling his ears, a pregnant wife waiting at home as we all are left to contemplate the import of two of Kurt's painfully eloquent speeches. "I miss you, Mark. I miss you really, really bad." And finally: "Sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy."