The film mostly concerns the relationship of Mark and Kurt (Oldham’s character) as they meet up after what is obviously a long period of time, to go exploring the Oregon Cascades in search of a hot spring. The film is particularly meditative in its approach – it actually begins with a sequence of Mark meditating in his back yard. Kurt’s phonecall is what disturbs him. It becomes a running theme.
We are given many slow, shots of rather sad, rainswept images of industrial remnants upon the landscape. Dialogue is either deliberate and brief, or reveals through cracks in the mundane.
Mark’s character is married with a pregnant wife, living a peaceful life in the country. Her reaction to the mention of Kurt is revealing. No words – just a weary half smile which makes Mark nervous and defensive.
We are given a lot of visual and aural detail in the film. As Mark waits outside Kurt’s house for Kurt to appear, we quickly realise that Kurt’s life is very different to Mark’s. Strolling along the street with a wild beard and a receded hairline, in ill-fitting old jeans and shirt and wheeling a borrowed television on a string, he is instantly both comic and tragic. Like I meeting Withnail again after many years apart to go for another jaunt in the countryside.
A recurring theme in the film is the often foreground hum of talk radio in Mark’s car. For a man who meditates he is strangely drawn (or passively falls) to the perpetual chatter and gossip and opinion of political talk radio. It seems eerie and perverse, like a constant battle taking place in his car.
Out on the road, Kurt smokes weed from a pipe and becomes increasingly confused and geographically lost. It was his idea to find this hot springs, and there are some powerfully infuriating scenes behind the wheel of a car, continually pulling into laybys and reversing. It seems symptomatic of Kurt’s life, adrift and lost in a druggy haze, pulling U-turns.
Yo La Tengo offer some gentle ambience and electric guitar lines to accompany the film’s road scenes. It’s not quite Easy Rider.
They spend the first night in an unplanned spot, happening across some obvious party hang out. It’s interesting how despite leaving the city to explore nature, Kurt ends up in an unattractive area populated with remains of civilization. They sit on an old sofa, drink beer, shoot the cans with air rifles and Kurt had even originally planned to bring that television that he was carrying. He is addicted to this life. Kurt cannot leave behind the city to enjoy nature in its purity. In fact, these activities of shooting cans and drinking beer seem tired and cliched when they act them out as adults. They are going through the motions of what they used to enjoy together. Their old joys.
On their first night, Kurt cracks in a stoned confusion and a drunken emotional outburst. He becomes morbidly sad and regretful, telling Mark that he feels that there is a wall between them that he can’t move. It’s a brief moment of morbid epiphany that quickly diffuses into the usual reassuring delusional banter. But if it wasn’t already very obvious, these two have moved lightyears apart from each other.
The following day the hot springs are found and we are given long silent shots of them preparing themselves to ease into a natural hot bath in what looks like a wooden treehouse. Oldham is a gifted actor, able to bring across the natural warmth and fragility of his character, his comic storytelling and his revealing incidental noises and exclamations.
In a particularly charged moment, Kurt goes to give Mark a shoulder massage. We see Mark’s hand visibly tense, clenching to the bath. As Kurt reassures him and kneads his shoulders, Mark eventually relaxes and there is a touching moment of bonding between them.
They drive home, and we see nothing of Mark. There is nothing to see. He goes back to his wife, his imminent child, his job and his responsibilities. Kurt we see, looking lost amongst the city again. Exploring as if in nature, but just aimlessly stalking the streets in confusion. A bum asks him for some change, and he says no. And they stand in silence together, as if Kurt is standing by a mirror. Then he goes to give him a little something. Perhaps seeing himself, perhaps not. And here the film ends.
Old Joy is a beautiful meditation on the chasm that can grow between old friends and the deep marked effects that one’s lifestyle and landscape has upon us. I felt sad watching it. And I felt more than anything, that I wanted not to be Kurt, adrift and alone in modern life with yearning creative sensibilities but without the direction or the impetus to channel them. Though to be Will Oldham – that’d be alright…
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