"Ideally, nothing should be shown. But that's impossible. So things must be shown from one sole angle that evokes all other angles without showing them." - Robert Bresson
"Old Joy" tells the story of two friends, Kurt and Mark, who reunite for a weekend camping trip in the Cascade mountains. They pack their things into Mark's car, get lost, find their camp site, chat, chill out at Bagby Hot Springs, pack their things back into Mark's car, and return home. They then wave good bye and go on their separate ways. Cue credits.
It's a simple tale. Below the surface, however, director Kelly Reichardt is up to other things. In Reichardt's hands, Kurt (ably played by Will Oldham, cast because of his role in John Sayles' similarly themed "Matewan") becomes the embodiment of a dying liberal class; an outmoded "movement" content to wield obsolete, impractical slogans whilst refusing to act. Kurt, a relic of the sixties, directionless, his life a shambles, his car battered and ill-suited for this trek, has been supplanted by a country full of Marks, a young father who finds himself torn between a life of Kurt-like intractability, and the conformity and comfort of techno-capitalism. Mark is sympathetic to Kurt, of course, but knows that if he doesn't abandon his friend he will become, like Kurt, a walking dead man. Mark's choice thus epitomises the deadlock of modern politics: he can wither outside the "system", or surrender and lead the kind of complacent "American Dream" that is expected of him. He surrenders, but Reichardt doesn't damn him.
If the film is also sympathetic toward Kurt, who has the soul of an artist, the tenderness of a woman, the idealism of a child, the conscience of an angel, it nevertheless makes a point of how much of a raggedy, ineffectual simpleton he ultimately is. Of course, the liberal class was not always this way. It once made possible the New Deal, during the 60s expressed the discontent of African-Americans, minorities and the anti war movement, fought for civil rights, gave the working class weekends off, the right to strike, the eight hour work day, social security etc etc. Today, though, it finds itself unable or unwilling to challenge dominant free market ideologies. It offers no ideological alternatives, it refuses to concede that power has been wrestled from the hands of citizens by corporations, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have been made irrelevant, and continues to ignore the suffering of tens of millions of Americans who make up an expanding underclass (see Reichardt's next film). Meanwhile, a chasm grows between the slogans, rhetoric and buzzwords of liberal values - which bear no relation to reality, have no influence on power and exude a tepid idealism completely divorced from daily life - and the predatory schema these liberals actually serve.
And so while Kurt pines for an idealised, simpler time - a time when he and Kurt were friends on the way to a better tomorrow - he is ultimately able to offer nothing but confused, half-thought out, hollow rhetoric. Reichardt paints him as a man neutered and sexless. Mark views his friend with a mixture of pity and sadness, but knows that he is no better.
Interestingly, though the film builds to a feeling of supreme melancholy, Reichardt spends much of "Old Joy" tantalising us with the possibility that Kurt may murder Mark or perhaps that some sexual act will blossom between the two. This is not simply a woman's parodic take on male bonding, but a realisation that Mark's world breeds fear, distrust, competitiveness and sexual/violent anxieties. Meanwhile, Kurt's oblivious to Mark's, and his audience's, uneasiness.
Aesthetically, like most of Reichardt's films, "Old Joy" is a work of tremendous restraint. But unlike many contemporary minimalists, who trade in cold, chic detachment, Reichardt, despite the tranquillity of her aesthetic, is able to both conjure up huge swells of emotion and evoke swathes of subtext, plot, character history and motivation from what are very sparse, seemingly bare-bones scripts. Every gaze or unspoken sentence speaks volumes. Only in her use of a car radio – which warbles on about the state of America, a "tactic" which even Altman couldn't make work – does Reichardt stray into annoying, obviousness.
Of course cinema's greatest directors have always understood how to approach ideas tangentially. Say something directly and it is hopelessly reductive. To conjure up complexity, one often has to adopt a kind of proactive ambiguity. The idea isn't to remove explanations – a kind of facile "it's whatever you want it to be" - but to provide the space, and the right semiotic "clues" or "triggers", for the audience to generate the right information itself; to contemplate wider possibilities or truths.
But some kind of distinction must be made between "minimalism" that works well dramatically, and that which works well thematically. Dramatically, "Old Joy" is remarkable in how much it says with its restraint. Intellectually, though, one must admit that what "Old Joy" says is now no longer worth saying. Reichardt's film merely regurgitates the dead-endedness of its heroes. It is as limp as poor Kurt, recalling the same impasse already mourned in films like "Return of the Seacaucus 7", "The Big Chill", "Thirtysomethings", "Get To Know Your Rabbit", "The Devil Probably", virtually every post 60s Godard film and countless others.
Still, while one should demand more from artists, one should remember that this was Reichardt's first major film (clearly conceived as something that was small and manageable), and her subsequent pictures do seem to build upon the work started here.
8/10 - Worth one viewing. For this film without the politics, see "Sure Fire".
"Old Joy" tells the story of two friends, Kurt and Mark, who reunite for a weekend camping trip in the Cascade mountains. They pack their things into Mark's car, get lost, find their camp site, chat, chill out at Bagby Hot Springs, pack their things back into Mark's car, and return home. They then wave good bye and go on their separate ways. Cue credits.
It's a simple tale. Below the surface, however, director Kelly Reichardt is up to other things. In Reichardt's hands, Kurt (ably played by Will Oldham, cast because of his role in John Sayles' similarly themed "Matewan") becomes the embodiment of a dying liberal class; an outmoded "movement" content to wield obsolete, impractical slogans whilst refusing to act. Kurt, a relic of the sixties, directionless, his life a shambles, his car battered and ill-suited for this trek, has been supplanted by a country full of Marks, a young father who finds himself torn between a life of Kurt-like intractability, and the conformity and comfort of techno-capitalism. Mark is sympathetic to Kurt, of course, but knows that if he doesn't abandon his friend he will become, like Kurt, a walking dead man. Mark's choice thus epitomises the deadlock of modern politics: he can wither outside the "system", or surrender and lead the kind of complacent "American Dream" that is expected of him. He surrenders, but Reichardt doesn't damn him.
If the film is also sympathetic toward Kurt, who has the soul of an artist, the tenderness of a woman, the idealism of a child, the conscience of an angel, it nevertheless makes a point of how much of a raggedy, ineffectual simpleton he ultimately is. Of course, the liberal class was not always this way. It once made possible the New Deal, during the 60s expressed the discontent of African-Americans, minorities and the anti war movement, fought for civil rights, gave the working class weekends off, the right to strike, the eight hour work day, social security etc etc. Today, though, it finds itself unable or unwilling to challenge dominant free market ideologies. It offers no ideological alternatives, it refuses to concede that power has been wrestled from the hands of citizens by corporations, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have been made irrelevant, and continues to ignore the suffering of tens of millions of Americans who make up an expanding underclass (see Reichardt's next film). Meanwhile, a chasm grows between the slogans, rhetoric and buzzwords of liberal values - which bear no relation to reality, have no influence on power and exude a tepid idealism completely divorced from daily life - and the predatory schema these liberals actually serve.
And so while Kurt pines for an idealised, simpler time - a time when he and Kurt were friends on the way to a better tomorrow - he is ultimately able to offer nothing but confused, half-thought out, hollow rhetoric. Reichardt paints him as a man neutered and sexless. Mark views his friend with a mixture of pity and sadness, but knows that he is no better.
Interestingly, though the film builds to a feeling of supreme melancholy, Reichardt spends much of "Old Joy" tantalising us with the possibility that Kurt may murder Mark or perhaps that some sexual act will blossom between the two. This is not simply a woman's parodic take on male bonding, but a realisation that Mark's world breeds fear, distrust, competitiveness and sexual/violent anxieties. Meanwhile, Kurt's oblivious to Mark's, and his audience's, uneasiness.
Aesthetically, like most of Reichardt's films, "Old Joy" is a work of tremendous restraint. But unlike many contemporary minimalists, who trade in cold, chic detachment, Reichardt, despite the tranquillity of her aesthetic, is able to both conjure up huge swells of emotion and evoke swathes of subtext, plot, character history and motivation from what are very sparse, seemingly bare-bones scripts. Every gaze or unspoken sentence speaks volumes. Only in her use of a car radio – which warbles on about the state of America, a "tactic" which even Altman couldn't make work – does Reichardt stray into annoying, obviousness.
Of course cinema's greatest directors have always understood how to approach ideas tangentially. Say something directly and it is hopelessly reductive. To conjure up complexity, one often has to adopt a kind of proactive ambiguity. The idea isn't to remove explanations – a kind of facile "it's whatever you want it to be" - but to provide the space, and the right semiotic "clues" or "triggers", for the audience to generate the right information itself; to contemplate wider possibilities or truths.
But some kind of distinction must be made between "minimalism" that works well dramatically, and that which works well thematically. Dramatically, "Old Joy" is remarkable in how much it says with its restraint. Intellectually, though, one must admit that what "Old Joy" says is now no longer worth saying. Reichardt's film merely regurgitates the dead-endedness of its heroes. It is as limp as poor Kurt, recalling the same impasse already mourned in films like "Return of the Seacaucus 7", "The Big Chill", "Thirtysomethings", "Get To Know Your Rabbit", "The Devil Probably", virtually every post 60s Godard film and countless others.
Still, while one should demand more from artists, one should remember that this was Reichardt's first major film (clearly conceived as something that was small and manageable), and her subsequent pictures do seem to build upon the work started here.
8/10 - Worth one viewing. For this film without the politics, see "Sure Fire".