Old Joy
First screened and reviewed in November 2006 / Most recently screened and reviewed in September 2025
Director: Kelly Reichardt. Cast: Daniel London, Will Oldham, Tanya Smith, Robin Rosenberg, Matt McCormick. Screenplay: Jonathan Raymond and Kelly Reichardt (based on a story by Jonathan Raymond). In Brief:
A compact frame containing a richly detailed canvas, and pentimento intimations of how prior snapshots might have looked.
VOR:⑤
Every few years, an unassuming, no-big-names indie comes along and refreshes everyone's sense of what creative integrity looks and feels like.
Such a delicate, plaintive miniature that stays firmly on the right side of preciousness or overstated pathos. Not every device Kelly Reichardt recruits toward her purposes (or Jon Raymond's purposes, or the actors' purposes) is necessarily subtle, or trying to be: the plangent Yo La Tengo score, the era-specific passages of Air America radio, the chipper presence of the dog Lucy (though even she must sense something?), the proliferating signposts of just where Kurt and Mark are, separately and together, in their processes of seeking and detaching from each other.
But if Old Joy proves that a quiet film isn't necessarily a subtle one, it also proves that a thematically candid movie can still emanate as much mystery and elusiveness as a dream. The choreography of sonic, spatial, rhythmic, narrative, and performance-based effects is just so beautifully synthesized and judged. I still made plenty of fresh discoveries, too, like the counter-intuitive pattern by which the sound mix is actually fullest and most active once Mark and Kurt find the oasis they have so doggedly pursued as a haven of quiet. Or maybe I'd notes that before and forgot.
Both these men's faces and performances remain indelible to me, 20 years on, and Old Joy persists as the first movie I think about when I hear the phrase "masculinity in cinema." Among her many successes with this material, Reichardt proves that supporting more female directors doesn't just yield richer, differently attuned portraits of women but also richer, revelatory, differently attuned portraits of men. I'm starting to lose track of how often I've seen Old Joy and of how much it's grown on me over two decades—maybe in an echo of Mark perhaps forgetting how often he's seen Kurt, and when exactly was the last time, and how it will feel and how it will go when they reunite, if only for two days. But I bet Kurt has precise, accurate answers to all those questions. Grade:A–
(I originally wrote this review on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)
Awards:
Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Douglas Edwards Experimental/Independent Film/Video Award (tie)
