Mark (Daniel London) receives a call on his answering machine from an old friend, Kurt (Will Oldham). When he calls back, he finds that Kurt is keen for them both to go off to visit hot springs in the forests of Oregon, mainly because they haven't spent much time in each other's company for a long time. Unlike the peripatetic Kurt, Mark wants to settle down with his pregnant wife Tanya (Tanya Smith), but for old time's sake he agrees to go along, despite Tanya not being happy at the arrangement. He needs a break, but does he need a break with Kurt?
You get the impression that director Kelly Reichardt (she scripted with Jonathan Raymond) had an enigmatic experience in mind when she created Old Joy, but as the narrative tends towards the obscure, "pretentious" is also a word that might spring to mind when looking for ways to describe it. That's not to say the film is in no way stimulating, as the two lead actors, one played by the equally mysterious Oldham, a.k.a. musician Bonny Prince Billy, contribute a convincing portrait of friends drifting apart.
A lot of the film is the spaces between conversation, filled with driving sequences (Reichardt shoots from out of the car window for long stretches), which could prompt feelings of missing out on the point to it all. It's as if there's something they're not telling us, something that is only spoken about when the tension occasionally breaks like a wave - just not anything like a tidal wave, as restraint is the order of the day. As Mark and Kurt go deeper into the wilderness, they don't reach an understanding, just a few hours of peace.
It doesn't go entirely smoothly, as thanks to Kurt's poor sense of direction they end up lost for much of the time, and have to camp on a patch of wasteground, complete with abandoned sofa for them to sit on while they take turns in shooting cans with a pellet gun. That night, Kurt has an outburst of emotion, one of the rare instances in the film, where he confesses that he misses Mark desperately, aware that their's is a relationship drawing to close as Kurt's hippy-dippy interests have no place in Mark's world of work and family.
You couldn't call Old Joy moving particularly, but it does pique the interest with a deliberate pacing that almost becomes hypnotic. At one point Mark takes a call on his phone from his wife, who can't seem to let him alone for a day or two, and when Mark tells her that they're having trouble finding the springs, he reminds her "Remember who we're dealing with", suggesting that he's simply tolerating Kurt's company. Yet by the end, the two men have reached an intimacy that speaks of their past companionship, and the film does have the quality of eavesdropping on private conversations: you don't hear much out of the ordinary, but you do catch sight of a bond there, even if they might have been better going on their trip separately and alone. The conclusion hints that Mark might well do that next time (or just take his dog, at least). Music by Yo La Tengo.
