Like many movies about the negotiation between past and present selves, Old Joy begins with an unexpected phone call from an old friend: Mark (Daniel London) is meditating in his yard (and his pregnant wife is blending a vegetable smoothie in the kitchen) when his former roommate Kurt (Will Oldham), back in town, calls to suggest an impromptu hiking trip.
Old Joy arrives during a banner month for young adult anomie: a new Criterion Collection DVD of Noah Baumbach’s postgrad panic comedy Kicking and Screaming; Claire Messud’s recently published novel The Emperor’s Children, about overeducated underachievers with author photo envy; the long-awaited theatrical release of Andrew Bujalski’s Billyburg anti-bildungsroman Mutual Appreciation. Though her movie’s verbal reticence and lush Oregon milieu (with rustic aural ambience courtesy Yo La Tengo) are outwardly dissimilar, writer-director Kelly Reichardt shares those works’ region-specific interest in the difference between a lifestyle and a life — Mark and Kurt could be the hippie older brothers of all those hyperverbal urbanites. Older because Old Joy straddles stagnation and maturity: embodied by Oldham, bald and bearded but with a kid’s toothy grin, potbelly, and cut-offs, Kurt’s the same rootless road-tripper and drum-circle crasher he’s always been, while impending father Mark has turned an interest in carpentry into a community service project (read: he’s engaging with society).
But rather than being a dichotomous dissection of the American male, subspecies granola (or the amorphous political allegory Reichardt has alluded to), Old Joy’s sliver of narrative — a fairly uneventful weekend getaway, in 76 minutes — is most attentive to London and Oldham’s uncertain rapport, an alternately wary and wistful approximation of once-automatic rhythms. They make the erosion of a once-close relationship look almost as natural as it actually is.
Opens September 20 at Film Forum
Old Joy arrives during a banner month for young adult anomie: a new Criterion Collection DVD of Noah Baumbach’s postgrad panic comedy Kicking and Screaming; Claire Messud’s recently published novel The Emperor’s Children, about overeducated underachievers with author photo envy; the long-awaited theatrical release of Andrew Bujalski’s Billyburg anti-bildungsroman Mutual Appreciation. Though her movie’s verbal reticence and lush Oregon milieu (with rustic aural ambience courtesy Yo La Tengo) are outwardly dissimilar, writer-director Kelly Reichardt shares those works’ region-specific interest in the difference between a lifestyle and a life — Mark and Kurt could be the hippie older brothers of all those hyperverbal urbanites. Older because Old Joy straddles stagnation and maturity: embodied by Oldham, bald and bearded but with a kid’s toothy grin, potbelly, and cut-offs, Kurt’s the same rootless road-tripper and drum-circle crasher he’s always been, while impending father Mark has turned an interest in carpentry into a community service project (read: he’s engaging with society).
But rather than being a dichotomous dissection of the American male, subspecies granola (or the amorphous political allegory Reichardt has alluded to), Old Joy’s sliver of narrative — a fairly uneventful weekend getaway, in 76 minutes — is most attentive to London and Oldham’s uncertain rapport, an alternately wary and wistful approximation of once-automatic rhythms. They make the erosion of a once-close relationship look almost as natural as it actually is.
Opens September 20 at Film Forum
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