[影片] Strongly Recommended: Old Joy (2006)
Posted: 2007-08-10 20:38
After reading about Old Joy in Jim Emerson's rave review (when he subbed for Roger Ebert during his illness last year), I was fully prepared to see a slow and obscure movie requiring a lot of attention and interpretation. But it turned out not to be the case. To be absorbed into the movie takes no particular effort at all.
Two old friends in their 30s go on a trip into the Oregonian woods in search of a hot spring. One is a mainstream working guy with a pregnant wife. The other is a drifter, free-spirit, and only half grown up psychologically. They were lost on the road at first, camped out, then found it the next day. They soaked in the hot spring, then went home and onto their separate ways. That's it. Nobody gets attacked or killed or shot (although there was a "shooting" scene). Nobody gets kissed or falls in love or gets a divorce. Nobody has an epiphany and turns his life upside down.
It is beautiful and moving. The pace is deliberate, but I never felt it was slow, for it captivated my full attention the whole time. It is deceptively simple, but in fact nuanced and delicate. It is quite accessible, if you just pay attention and listen. The dialog was few and spare, but there is unusually rich texture and layers of sound throughout the entire film. The moments with music and those without music are equally melodious and moody.
I was thoroughly taken by the two characters: their separate thoughts and lives and their interactions, the unspoken reminiscence of the years past. Perhaps because I am of the same age and going through similar situations, they seem particularly vivid, even though they are men.
I was not waiting for the story to go in a specific thematic direction and would have been happy enough if it didn't. But the last few minutes suddenly revealed the movie's "message", or at least one of a few, in a quiet climax. Tears started to stream down my face. The power of the end illuminated everything and broke me down.
Funny how such pure realism, especially in observing and revealing characters, is the last thing we expect in today's movies. Only when my expectations of dramatic conventions were dashed one by one did I realize how much I had been conditioned by all the cliches. There are no twists, no shocks, no surprise revelations, no hysterics. The most startling quality of the movie is precisely how real it is. As the two friends drove from the city into the mountains, got lost, camped overnight, trekked into the hot spring, I was reminded of my own (few) hiking trips in nature with friends. As city dwellers, our conversations begin to stray from our usual concerns the deeper we enter into the woods. Surrounded by chirping birds and flowing streams, a different self often surfaces. Our thoughts take off in directions we are not prepared for. All this truth is captured with understated precision in the movie.
The bulk of the movie is like a two-men play, with only Mark (the mainstream guy on the verge of fatherhood) and Kurt in each other's company. Mark's wife showed up once at the beginning and as a voice on the phone later.
In the opening scene, Mark gets a call from his drifting buddy Kurt who invites him on a weekend road trip into the woods. Mark eyed his pregnant wife, who sat near him with open disapproval. He makes a weak attempt to plead with her, but the knowing resignation on her face hints something between them that is never fully explained. Later on the road, after they camped the night and sit down at a diner for breakfast, Mark gets a call from his wife and takes it out of Kurt's hearing. The way he talks to her about Kurt and the way he talks to Kurt afterward is so breathtakingly subtle and loaded with meaning, that I was convinced it was a man who made the film. Only a man can get the relationships between a wife and a husband and his buddy that she dislikes so ... right. Only a man would portray a man's awkward position between his woman and his buddy with such poignant sympathy.
But I was totally wrong. The movie was directed by a woman, Kelly Reichardt, who wrote the screenplay from a short story by Jonathan Raymond. It's quite astounding. She does male friendship much better than Ang Lee.
Old Joy is a perfect showcase for the principle of "Show, don't tell." To appreciate it fully, one is required to watch and listen, because there is no exposition to force you to "get the message."
I love movies made by people who love their homes -- UFO's vibrant streets of Hong Kong, Almodovar's crummy neighborhoods of Madrid. A genuine sense of rootedness needs no spotless glamor or postcard glory. The distinctive American landscape in Old Joy moves me, even though I'm the last person to appreciate the strip malls and parking lots and fast food joints and trailer parks ... How could she show these dull and ugly scenery with such tenderness, and move me to feel the same tenderness too? To love even the ugly and damaged ...
Why the principle "Show, don't tell"? You will understand if you see Old Joy. The power of realism gently handed to the receiving audience/reader always overwhelms the loudest argument and the cleverest ideology.
