Old Joy [Criterion Collection]

Director: Kelly Reichardt Kelly Reichardt

Overview

"Old Joy is writer/director Kelly Reichardt's long-awaited follow-up to her revered but underseen 1994 feature debut, River of Grass. (She directed a couple of shorts in the interim, including Ode, a Super-8 film inspired by the song ""Ode to Bill."") Daniel London and cult folksinger Will Oldham star in the film as two old friends who go on a camping trip to a hot springs in the Cascade mountain range of Oregon. London's Mark is the responsible one with the modest house, the wife (who resents his gallivanting off), the dog (who comes along), and the baby on the way. He listens to Air America, and makes all the right liberal noises. Oldham's Kurt is the free-spirit type with the untamed facial hair and the junker car that looks more lived-in than vehicular. Kurt suggests the trip, and they take Mark's car. Kurt has the directions to the place, and they get lost (""I think we're somewhere...in the area"") and spend the night at a garbage-strewn campsite, where they discuss their lives, and Kurt laments the apparent dissolution of their friendship. In the morning, they have breakfast in a diner, and Mark apologizes to Tanya (Tanya Smith) over the phone, explaining that he'll be home later than expected. In the daylight, they find the hot springs, and spend the afternoon quietly unwinding. Reichardt co-wrote Old Joy with Jonathan Raymond, adapting his short story, which was originally written as a collaboration with photographer Justine Kurland. It was shot (on Super-16) by Peter Sillen and features a soundtrack by Yo La Tengo. The film was selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art for inclusion in the 2006 edition of New Directors/New Films."

Product Details

Release Date:	12/10/2019
UPC:	0715515239417
Original Release:	2006
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:13:00
Sales rank:	33,555

Special Features

New 2k digital restoration, approved by Director Kelly Reichardt and Cinematographer Peter Sillen; New interviews with Reichardt, Sillen, and author Jonathan Raymond; New conversation between actors Daniel London and Will Oldham; Plus: An essay by film critic Ed Halter

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Daniel London	Mark
Will Oldham	Kurt
Tanya Smith	Tanya
Robin Rosenberg	Waitress
Keri Moran	Lawnmower
Steve Doughton	Diner Patron
Autumn Campbell	Diner Patron
Darren Prolsen	Homeless Man
Jillian Wieseneck	Diner Patron
Matt McCormick	Weed Salesman
P. C. Peri	Diner Patron
Daniel A. Lomino	Actor

Technical Credits

Kelly Reichardt

Jonathan Raymond

Kelly Reichardt	Director,Screenwriter
Jonathan Raymond	Screenwriter
Lars Knudsen	Producer
Neil Kopp	Producer
Jay van Hoy	Producer
Anish Savjani	Producer,Executive Producer,Producer
Joshua Blum	Executive Producer,Producer
Todd Haynes	Executive Producer,Producer
Mike S. Ryan	Executive Producer,Producer,Executive Producer
Eric Offin	Sound Editor

Editorial Reviews

Kelly Reichardt makes a triumphant return to feature filmmaking with the gorgeously elegiac road movie, Old Joy. Collaborating with writer Jonathan Raymond, cinematographer Peter Sillen, and actors Will Oldham and Daniel London, and utilizing and perfectly attuned original score by Yo La Tengo, Reichardt has crafted a deeply intimate, personal, and true-to-life story of two estranged friends on a camping trip. Even more remarkably, Old Joy subtly delivers a devastatingly incisive political message that speaks volumes about the failures of liberalism in the age of "Dubya." In the end, Mark (London) clings to his virtuous ideology (look at the pleasure he gets in listening to Air America, or in his own outrage at an overheard comment about the war) much more tightly than he clings to his friendship with Kurt (Oldham), who actually lives his life by those ideals, and suffers for it. But the characters are far from mere symbols. Much of the film's dry humor and poignancy derives from the extent to which London and Oldham individuate them and flesh them out. With its long tracking shots across the backwoods mountain roads of Oregon, Old Joy could be mistaken for a landscape film, but the landscape it maps is as much spiritual as it is physical, and the personal story it tells is inescapably political, just as the form of Reichardt's quiet, deliberate, and beautifully shot movie, with its abundance of visual and verbal wit, perfectly suits the slow burn of its content -- its achingly exquisite tale of reconciliation and abandonment.