Review of Old Joy (2006) by Becca B — 13 Nov 2006

When we first see Mark, he's meditating in the garden of his Oregon home. The phone rings. It's his old friend Kurt calling to say that he's back in town. Does Mark want to join him on an overnight camping trip? Mark's pregnant wife is displeased with the idea but he grabs his sleeping bag and his dog and off he goes anyway.

Kurt turns out to be this balding guy with a mountain man beard who smokes pot incessantly. It's unclear whether he's currently living in his van or squatting in a friend's apartment but from the sounds of things, he moves around quite a bit.

Apparently, Mark and Kurt used to be close friends at some point in their lives, but they don't seem to have much in common anymore. Kurt seems very happy to see Mark but Mark responds to his excited chatter with polite grunts and weak smiles.

The plan is to drive up into the mountains and hike to some remote hot springs that Kurt visited several years earlier, but Kurt's pot-addled memory is foggy and they end up driving round and round, never quite able to find the trailhead. Night falls so they pull into a clearing and set up camp in what appears to be a popular dumping ground. They drink beers and engage in some half-hearted reminiscence, the awkward sort you have with someone with whom you share memories but have no current connection. Kurt picks up on the awkward vibe and tells Mark that he's sorry they've grown so distant. Mark denies it, insisting that they're still good. Kurt backs off and blames the beer on his ill-received attempt at intimacy.

The next morning, Kurt and Mark drive to the nearest town to eat breakfast and ask for directions. Mark orders his eggs with dry toast and answers his cell phone during the meal, little things that seem to reinforce how much they've grown apart. Or more specifically, how much Mark has. Mark's become a married, dry-toast-eating, father-to-be and Kurt is still the same old beer-guzzling, dope-smoking Kurt that he's always been.

Fortunately, someone who works in the restaurant has directions to the trailhead so this time the guys are able to find it. The hot springs themselves turn out to be deserted and very cool. Someone's built big individual wooden tubs that you can fill with water and soak in. Mark looks pretty contented for the first time on the trip; he and Kurt lie in their adjacent tubs and don't even try to talk over the rush of the water.

Kurt gets out first and breaks the silence. He launches into this long meandering story about feeling awful after accidentally hitting an old guy with his bicycle and then repeatedly encountering the same guy throughout the day, bringing back the same bad feelings each time. This reminds him of a dream he had in which an old woman comforts him by saying that "sorrow is just worn out joy", which is kind of an interesting idea but doesn't seem all that comforting. "Well sure you're miserable [i]now[/i]", this aphorism seems to state, "but you used to be absolutely euphoric!" And this makes me feel better how?

And another thing...where does all the joy come from in the first place? Are we born with a fixed supply of joy and when we use it up, that's it? Should we try to pace ourselves joy-wise so as not to wear it out too quickly? Or does it maybe only wear out for people who outgrow their old friends and start eating dry toast? And what about sorrow? Does sorrow wear out too? Does it recycle back into joy? Because I think "joy is just worn out sorrow" would make me feel a whole lot better than the other way around.

This is an extremely slow-paced movie. There are lots of nature scenes, close-ups of birds and water droplets forming and such that are at least pretty to look at, but there are other equally slow scenes which seem to serve no real purpose except to pad this movie out to its rather scant 83 minutes. Mark and Kurt spend a very long time silently driving down decidedly unpicturesque stretches of road littered with lumberyards and tract housing which I assume was meant to set the mood but was making me feel kind of antsy. Ditto for several long minutes where Mark drives to pick up Kurt while impassively listening to liberal talk radio. I struggled to relate the talk show content to what was going on in the movie but eventually decided it had nothing to do with it.

I did like this movie, but not as much as I wanted to. It does a great job of re-creating the melancholy mood of old friends coming to terms with fact that the days of their youth are behind them, for better or for worse. And I do like the "worn out joy" concept, even if I don't quite understand it. But even though I normally like movies where nothing much ever happens, this one really tried my patience at times.

"Disenchantment is worn out patience.".