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OLD JOY. Dir Kelly Reichardt. 2005

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Dropout Kurt arrives in town and calls up his old friend, earnest father-to-be Mark to suggest a camping trip out in the forest, away from the city. They haven’t seen each other for some time and the film suggests a desire for intimacy as well as a quest for peace.

Something of a lost soul, Kurt is emotional and, at times, to be pitied. He lives outside society, in a world of new age type retreats and travels, which seem to have left him out on the margins. In contrast, Mark has a home and a pregnant partner, and tunes his car radio in to phone-ins with much loud chat about the state of society in America but he seems only half alive.

They drive out of town, with the camera as passenger, which gazes out of the car window while a gorgeous soundtrack by Yo La Tengo sets a mellow mood. The use of extended silence makes me a little uneasy; it’s hard to get away from memories of Deliverance, and a sense of apprehension.

In the city, the glass of the car windows insulates us from the crowding and noise of modern living, whereas out in the Cascade Mountains, it also insulates us from natural beauty. Alongside the long (but not uncomfortable) silences between the two men, I am uncertain how much this suggests our insulation from one another. The men’s eyes rarely meet.

The minimal dialogue alerts us to interesting camerawork. There are lots of steeply angled shots, and Reichardt’s direction of Old Joy has the extraordinary effect of feminizing the two men in the film. There are long, lingering close ups of Mark’s eyes and lips, on Kurt’s legs (which are particularly elegant), on both of their narrow shoulders, longish hair and unfit looking bodies. It’s a far cry from Daniel Craig’s Bond, and the combination of the whole implies a lassitude, whilst establishing another way of gazing on the male body, and considering male relationships. It left me feeling really sad.
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