Product DescriptionBased on a 50-page script by Jon Raymond, and shot in ten days, Old Joy has a quiet energy that propels it further in its simplicity than many big budget movies. Director Kelly Reichardt, a former assistant on early Todd Haynes films, has enlisted Haynes as an executive producer and Yo La Tengo for soundtrack, lending Old Joy a hipness that it exploits to reveal the relationship between the two main characters. Mark (Daniel London) leaves his pregnant wife, Tanya, at home for an excursion into the woods with his hippified buddy, Kurt (Will Oldham). Leaving Portland in Mark's Volvo, with dog in tow, Kurt smoke bowls while Mark navigates into the Cascades backcountry, where the two get temporarily lost then camp until morning, for a hike to paradisiacal Bagby Hot Springs. Slight tension arises out of their divergent lifestyles. Mark's a liberal yuppie, while Kurt's easy drifting underpins his idealism. In key scenes, Kurt verbalizes his fears that the two old friends are losing intimacy. But Kurt's sweetness, for example when he asks, "Is it cool if I sleep in the tent with you?" or massages Mark's shoulders, overrides any real conflict. Cuts to birds chirping, slugs crawling, and campfires raging also relax the viewer as illustrations of the forest's healing power. More a meditation than a packed adventure film, some may find Old Joy slow and meandering, while others will enjoy this pace as precisely the film's point. --Trinie Dalton - Actors: Daniel London, Will Oldham, Tanya Smith, Robin Rosenberg, Keri Moran
- Director: Kelly Reichardt
- Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
- Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
- Language (Original Language): English
- Release Date: 2007-05-01
- Running Time: 76 minutes
- Theatrical Release Date: 2005
Customer ReviewsReviewed on 2008-07-23  
ugh
The praises of all the positive reviews about strained relationships and feelings explored are entirely true.
However, I think any adult is capable of understanding those aspects and extracting all this film has to offer in the first twenty minutes. If you picked a conversation out of the middle, you could probably cut that to about five minutes.
It's a story far too mundane for a film and should be avoided - just like the relationship it portrays. |  | Reviewed on 2008-05-15
An Accurate Depiction of the Bagby Experience
I probably can add little to the many comments here about this movie itself; you can read as many who think the movie is great as who think it is a waste of time. Therefore, I would like to address the Bagby Hot Springs experience. [Like many, many others, Bagby is one of my two favorite hots springs in the Northwest. (My other favorite is Jerry Johnson Hot Springs in Idaho.)] First, when I saw these two men drive across a particular bridge I told my wife they're going the wrong way. And, of course, we learn that they did get lost. So, if you think you'd like to visit Bagby, bear in mind that the roads shown in the movie, while in general give the feel of the forty miles from Estacada, should not be believed is the right way out there. Years ago there used to be signs directing the way, but the last time I went there the signs had been removed so you really have to know on your own how to get there.
The movie gives the impression that it is undeveloped, except at the hot springs itself. In fact, there is a good-sized parking lot and a forest service campground almost next to the Bagby parking areas. [I have seen a 'milk truck' concession stand there in busy weekends.] Once you are parked, you immediately go across a Forest Service footbridge over a creek, and then start up the trail, about a mile and a half to the hot springs. With my family it would take twenty to thirty minutes to walk. I don't know what trail they followed up in the movie, but it looks a lot more rugged than the actual trail. There is at least one more footbridge to cross on the way in or out. So, once again the movie gives you a good feeling of being in the rain forest, but it is not along the actual trail.
What you see in the movie is the actual Bagby Hot Springs, My whole family, and friends who went with us, soaked in the actual hollowed out cedar log tubs shown in the movie. There is also a four or five person hot tub under the roof the movie shows. [If you are a bit too shy to go in the communal areas, there are maybe half a dozen private enclosures on the other side of the communal area walls.] The depiction of the two friend's soak in the hot water is exactly how it really is. It may seem boring to some, and it may be boring watching others in a movie, but the actual sound of the water and the many birds chirping or warbling, and even the gentle breeze have a tendency to create a spontaneous reverence arising from Nature. Needless talking there is about as out of place as babbling aloud in a great cathedral. So, it may seem that the movie lacks dialogue there, but that really is how one in tune with Nature feels while soaking at Bagby.
Don't get the idea that Bagby Hot Springs is as unused as the movie makes it seem. I've been there only once when nobody else was there, and that on a miserable rainy, cold summer weekday. Indeed, if it is a nice weekend day, you can expect to have to wait for your turn. But, the wait is worth it. Also, this truly is a family destination; the hike is challenging to children, but well within their abilities. Our kids have almost always found other kids out there to play with. Finally, at the end of the movie it says that nudity is not allowed. Hogwash. I can't recall ever being there when somebody wore a bathing suit, and that includes toddlers, children, adolescents, adults and even the elderly. So, if you are offended by the naked body, you'd do best to look for one of the more remote hot springs in the Pacific Northwest. Therefore, when the guys in the movie go naked in the log tubs, that is how you'll find it if you visit the place, except that also there with you will be the thin, fat, young or old naked people also soaking as well.
In short, I don't think there could be a more realistic and accurate depiction of the Bagby Hot Springs experience than that shown in this movie. The only reservation would be that the trail to it looks a lot less developed in the movie than it actually is. The trail Mark and Kurt are shown walking on as they leave is the actual trail. If you find this movie boring or not to your liking, then you probably aren't cut out to soak in Nature as you soak in Her natural hot springs. | | Reviewed on 2008-04-03
There Is Comfort To Be Found
Despite the corny-looking poster image of two dressed-down guys in the woods, I decided to check out this indie film which had its premiere at Sundance and won a top prize at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. I wasn't expecing much, but WOW! The pace is careful yet easy, the dialogue spare and to the point, the acting style much understated and natural. As a whole the film achieves a rare quality of emotion that burns, glows, then left an imprint on my heart. Will Oldham has to be congratulated for his subtly magnificent acting job as Kurt. He deftly portrays the part of the loser, while slyly stinging us with his two arresting monologues, one about "worn out joy" and the other of the "physics" of a tear. This is a sad, sad film, but writer John Raymond's thoughts and words will somehow comfort you, as there is comfort to be found. | | Reviewed on 2008-01-21
A little conflict would go a long way!
We played "Old Joy" last year at our college theater and the audience (those who stayed awake) were stunned. Nothing much happens in this picture. It has been praised by many critics as a great work of art. I think that's the same mentality that calls a blank canvas a great work of art. This film has good acting (considering they didn't have much of a script to work with) and the photography is beautiful. The main problem with this picture is the total lack of conflict. It seemed like I was watching a 90 minute home movie of friends on a camping trip. The reason good movies keep our interest is the conflict. Without it we may as well just sit and watch the fish swim in an aquarium. This is the kind of film you can go out to the kitchen several times for snacks and make a couple trips to the bathroom without pausing the DVD. You wouldn't miss anything important, anyway. What a shame!
| | Reviewed on 2008-01-11
A subtle and poetic evocation of the distance between old friends
This film captures a remarkable series of insights into the ways we can lose ourselves and become distant from others as we find ourselves increasingly caught up in the commitments that adulthood presses upon us. It captures the experience of moving through places, of noticing silently, and has an atmosphere and sense of place that is rare in film. To be young is to experience the world as open-ended, to see possibilities everywhere and what happens with growing up is the discovery that apparent possibilities are not real, and the creation of obligations that come with taking up projects of any sort: to get a job or to get married or to make plans is to bind oneself in ways to a future that begins to take upon itself the air of inevitability. Mark is married, about to become a father, but still feels the longing to connect with an open-ended past, with a once-close friend, with a nature that does not confine. Kurt, who tells Mark that he admires him for his impending fatherhood, since he has never made a commitment that he couldn't retreat from, apparently has no job and is on the brink of losing his apartment -- and yet can't bear to lose a friend as well and wants to go on a trip to recover some of the intimacy of a connection with someone who once understood him. The film captures the nuances of their relationship and of their similarities and differences very precisely, and with unflinching honesty. The excitement of getting away for a weekend with a friend in a beautiful place is contrasted with the boredom of having next to nothing to say and the muted annoyance that comes when Kurt can't find his way and they get lost. It is a meditative film, almost poetic, and could be tedious for someone expecting a series of plot-driven revelations. This is the kind of film in which the profound and defining moments (a brief connection when the two friends arrive at the hot springs) are played with great subtlety and are able to have the weight that they do because so much else is understated. Much is told here by gestures, hand movements, postures, and images of nature. In that sense, the film resembles work by filmmakers such as Dreyer and Bresson and especially Ozu (or Kiarostami) -- who have been described (by Paul Schrader and others) as working in a "transcendental" style that emphasizes the mundane and procedural and mute and understated and alienated moments so that the experience of connection and joy can stand out without artifice. | |
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