Okay, so my take on this movie may be a little odd but I believe there are no wrong answers so here goes.
I feel that Old Joy paints a picture that Kurt is a homosexual.
Now here me out. There is this idea called "queering a text" which I used in this film. So often when homosexuality is not explicitly implied that we as an audience often assume the character is a heterosexual. Thus the idea of queering a text is when you attempt to find the queer potential in a form of media/literature. Now being gay is never explicitly stated in the film. We know that Mark is married and just views Kurt as a good friend, but the film paints Kurt to be different. When Kurt is hanging out with Mark he is constantly explictilty stating heterosexual things after a potential homosexual statement. While driving into the mountains Kurt discussing a male friend that he had the most amazing time with, and Kurt discusses this man fondly but quickly beings talking about the beautiful women and how "i think he got laid" in an attempt to heterosexualize the conversation. We can also see this to be evident while the two men are about to go to bed while on the mountain. Kurt asks if he can sleep in the tent with Mark, to which Mark agrees stating that it is,"a two man tent, and the dog will be in there too." Now two grown men sharing a tent could come across to be read as gay so Kurt quickly says, "At least the dog is a girl." Again, an attempt to define is heterosexuality. This seems like an attempt to bog down certain emotions Kurt might be feeling in regards to his own sexuality. We see a drunk and possibly stoned Kurt breaking down by the fire saying, "i'm not fine." Now this is where I began to queer the text. Having this emotional break down and reflecting inward and self-loathing is a theme present in many queer individuals. Our society is heteronomative and anything that goes against that standard is often and sadly shunned. And for Kurt to be an older man and not a teenager these feelings of repression could be extremely strong.
Then when the film eventually leads us to the hot springs we find both Kurt and Mark getting naked and laying in the wooden tubs. During this scene Kurt looks at Mark in a very sensual way, suggesting that Kurt has feelings for Mark. The climax of this scene is when Kurt gives Mark a massage. Now we see Mark become highly uncomfortable by this, presumably because he thinks/knows that Kurt is gay. However he eventually relaxes and the camera pans to his wedding ring which slowly dips into the water hiding it from sight.
This is what drives my theory home. This film was made in 2006 and today but especially then the wedding ring represented the union between a man and woman. Luckily that archaic definition is evolving but nevertheless we see the wedding ring fade away, this suggest that he is hiding his marriage in order to have this homoerotic moment with Kurt.
Now we don't see what happens after this massage. The camera just cuts to the two friends walking back to the car. I believe this is the directors way of leaving it ambiguous and letting the viewers decide for themselves. That is precisely why the word gay is never mentioned. When the two friends part ways we see a complete shift in tone. The soft and calming music is replaced with talk radio and Kurt is clearly lost in the big city. I don't know if Kelly Reichardt intended for this to be a plot line. I don't know if she wanted this to be read as a queer film. However it is interesting how when you replace the assumed heterosexuality with homosexuality we are left with a completely different story.
I think this is an entirely valid take om the film. If we wanted to return to last week's conversation we could approach this question through the lens of authorial intentionality (but which author: KR or Jon Raymond?). In this case we would have to ask them for their intention and then trust they speak the truth. Or we could approach it from the idea that the audience actively makes meaning--which is what Elle does; inthis case we have to balance textual cues with theories of reading as well as the background we bring to a text. What Elle doesn't--fortunately--is exemplify thefalsityof her first statement, expressed as a belief. There are wrong answers: 1+1 is not 3 (unless you redefine the enitre mathematical system), so saying it is 3 is false. Old Joy is not about my cat Melville. Such a statement would beequally false. So whether or not there are false answers is not a matter of belief or opinion. Elle offers an interpretation, which she supports with textual evidence. She makes a plausible case--one thatis not indisputable but reasonable. That is dicidedly different than saying the filmis about my cat, which would be an insubstantiable statement and thus incorrect.
The question to ask--rather than debating whether or not Kurt is really gay (ultimately that cannot be proven one way or the other)--is what difference it makes, and for what, whether we give the text a queer or straight reading. One question to ask, if we queered the text: why did KR not make this more explicit? Why did she not thematize it? And what effects does this decisio have? and vice versa: if we went with an hetero reading,then we could ask why KR inserts such "queer" clues, and to what end/effect. Note the difference: this is no longer about being correct or not but about what difference it makes--for something--that the filmmaker chose the cinematic strategies she did.
While I think that your argument for queering a text and breaking away from assuming heterosexuality is a valid (and incredibly important) one, this might not be best when applied to Old Joy (2004). To touch on Professor Abel's point of author intentionality, (along with last week's discussion on author's intention versus audience's reception), I turn to the readings. In the interview by Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega, on speaking of the content the short story from which she adapted Old Joy, Reichardt states that, “Mark is not married in the short story either. He is single, so he and Kurt are closer to each other in the story; their worlds are not so far apart. John Raymond wrote about a very personal and nuanced friendship, about the elusiveness of friendship.” This pairs well with Sam Littman’s statement about gender and character complexity in Senses of Cinema where he observes that, “films focusing on men of the kind we might know or meet in the course of our daily lives are rarities…It’s the sensitivity of Reichardt’s male portraits that so surprises; these characters feel close to home.”
That is not to invalidate your whole point since she also states, “There’s a lot of space in his writing and in my filmmaking for people to grab on to what they want and identify what they want. I can see two people walking out of the movie and feel completely different about it. There’s space to create this kind of encounter” (Rodriguez-Ortega). Nevertheless, the conscious choice to have Mark be married is purposeful. Its main target seems to be the elimination of sexual tension, in order to open up a space for ambiguity and possibility (which she commented on in the interview we watched today). This being my second viewing of Old Joy, I still regard the hot spring massage scene as a beautifully rendered erotic scene, and I am sure many will support your point, and point to it as evidence of homoerotic undertones. Still, I think it is yet another example of the ingrained tensions of gender expectations and performances. Even in the isolation of the forest, societal gender roles and behaviors problematize a true male-to-male connection. To queer the text would be to minimize the importance, reality, and possibility of an intimate heterosexual friendship in today's world.
Thank you Marco! I'm glad you liked my post. I think if we queered the text KR did this subtlety on purpose to not be like the other queer films that were being released in 2006? Or perhaps the idea of being closeted and repressed with one's sexuality is something the individual often keeps hidden and doesn't speak about. Perhaps KR is referencing that idea in regards to a queer reading. And if this was created in a heterosexual lens perhaps these moments are just showing how close to male friends can be. Often our society takes anything intimate between two males to be interpreted as gay so perhaps she was simply challenging the norm?
In this blog post i would like to talk about two points. The first being something that Kelly Reichardt referenced in the video Marco showed us today. In the video, she stressed the importance of keeping the camera in the same position and letting the characters move in and out of the shot, instead of the shot following the characters move around. This seems quite opposite to the camerawork we saw in Assayas's films, where the camera would constantly be moving, panning, running beside characters. That's not to say that the camera doesn't move in Old Joy, but that it stays put in one place whilst panning around. I'm guessing most of the shots were shot from a tripod although there were some handheld shots in the car rides. I think one of the best examples of this type of camera work is in the very last shot of the film, in which Kurt is shown on screen and then he suddenly jumps out of frame. The camera tries to pan to follow him but is unable and he disappears. This type of camerawork i think adds a certain amount of nostalgia to the film, as if the camera's perspective was limited like a person's, and some people sadly go missing from the shot. To a certain degree, this type of camerawork builds onto my next point in this blogpost, namely, the meaning of the title. Perhaps one of the main ways of reading the title is as a reference to the friendship between Kurt and Mark, who appear to be lifelong friends but have found their paths to have grown quite distant. The reasons behind their lull in friendship could be due to economics, or Kurt's inability to become an adult, or Mark's priority to prepare to raise a family. But no matter what the reason, the purpose behind the trip is to rediscover their friendship, to go on adventure like they did she they were young. And through this narrative of friendship, I believe Reichardt is able to focus on the true subject of this film, namely, nostalgia. The future looms over both characters but most of their time is spent thinking about the past. I really enjoyed how slim the timeline of this movie was. In a movie like Clean, the narrative felt like it plays out as long as necessarily has to. In Old Joy, it's as if the movie went on for a modest amount of time allotted to it. In away, nostalgia, or more broadly, coping with the past, is what i see all of those movies we have seen so far class having in common.
Old Joy is simply impressive. It was shot under two weeks, edited in Reichardt’s apartment, and with the extremely small budget the six-person crew was very small. The production may have been modest, but it’s the premise surrounding friendship, time, and space that creates most of the impact in this story.
From the plot and characters, to the cinematography and sound, there are many great connections to the title of this film. Reichardt shows us how there is something sad about getting older and growing apart from friends. During a scene when Kurt tells Mark about his dream he says “Sorrow is just warn out Joy,” this really sums up how I think Mark and Kurt feel about each other in their older age. Their distant relationship reflects the title well. The experiences Kurt and Mark had in the past together simply can’t match up to where they’re at in life now. The fact that Mark has a wife and baby on the way and Kurt is in his 30’s still wandering loosely a drift makes their relationship seem distant. It’s as if the camping gear Mark stores in his shed only comes out when someone like Kurt is back in town. Camping should be relaxing and enjoyable, but just like Mark’s relationship with Kurt, it fades away when work and family become priority.
The cinematography backs this up nicely too. Old Joy was shot on 16mm and converted to 35mm, filmed using almost all natural light, which gives it an authentic vintage tone. The coloring seems slightly de-saturated giving it the sense of ‘old’. There are a couple of scenes when Mark leaves Kurt to speak to his wife on the phone. One scene particularly, as the two are lost and traveling to find the hot spring, we watch Mark take a call from his wife and as he walks away to talk to her, our perspective is given from Kurt’s POV, where we watch patiently from the car. Just by composition and use of silence alone, this POV gives the audience a way to honestly feel the distance between these characters.
The pacing and sound are something worth noting as well. The pacing throughout Old Joy is similar to that of Jericho and Yella. It is slow, but during an interview with Filmmaker, Reichardt states that she likes to use a lot of open space in her films in order to leave room for the audience to inflect their own ideas about the characters. This sense of space is added when Mark and Kurt don’t communicate. It allows us to pick up on what they would be thinking and feeling. With the sound, the score by Yo La Tengo really only plays when the two are traveling in the car, otherwise most of what we hear are diegetic sounds of wind and trees and birds chirping.
In the Senses of Cinema review on Reichardt, it’s noted that she doesn’t often fill the frame with a lot of symbolism in her films. But in a few different sequences, the birds that come and go into close framing, in this context, adds to a sense of freedom that Mark and Kurt are searching for by getting away from the city. This sense of freedom however, doesn’t quite seem to be fully reached. I think of the opening scene when Mark is trying to meditate as a good reflection to their trip to the mountains. Mark meditates, but the stress around him, (sound of the city, flies, etc.) prevents him from doing this. Mark and Kurt’s trip to the mountains felt similar in that Kurt tries to tell Mark how much he misses their old friendship, but stops himself before going any further. They both sort of loom throughout their trip as if the freedom they enjoyed together in the past can’t ever be the same on top of the stresses and change of growing older.
Perhaps one of the more “relaxing” films we have screened so far in class, Old Joy certainly tells a captivating story about friendship that most can relate to. What a brilliant way to stage a rekindling of friendship by having a camping trip—a “man’s” activity, as some would call it. Kelly Reichardt exceptionally sets her narrative in the Oregon mountains as she expresses in an interview, “ The two things that are somewhat inherent in [a story about] going into the mountains alone with someone, especially if they’re going to a hot spring, are the loneliness and desertedness or whatever it is of being in the forest and then sexuality. They’re either going to kill each other or they’re going to fuck each other — one of those things is bound to happen”. Of course, the most memorable scene is when Kurt gives Mark a massage that could be viewed with a queer reading, yet the camera never shows anything homosexual and leaves room for ambiguity. This kind of ambiguous tone is an operation throughout the film notably with Kurt, and the ambiguity is speaking about the overall state of society’s uncertainty within the film.
During the drive to the hot springs, Kurt recalls on times passed. He gives the audience just enough detail for one to piece together his and Mark’s relationship, but one never fully knows Kurt or Mark’s background. Moreover, the ending scene with him wandering the streets is also very uncertain. Why isn’t Kurt at home, what is he doing, and where is he going? One may connect this to the radio talk show, as the radio host comments, “that’s why the government can’t say we are in a state of prosperity, but we are in the state of recovery” (something to that effect). This notion in the film is reflected with Kurt wandering the streets, as one receives the scene with the homeless man begging for money. Perhaps Kurt himself is in a state of economic recovery, just like the beggar.
This ambiguity or uncertainty resonates with Kurt and Mark’s relationship as well. It is with this trip that they might begin to be in a state of relationship recovery. Kurt greatly expresses that he feels something blocking him and Mark’s friendship. This indescribable void is the uncertainty of the economy, family, and during this scene, the uncertainty of direction. Both Kurt and Mark are affected by these things, and this trip away from the city disconnects them from the gravity that is pulling them towards uncertainty. Laying in that log tub at the hot springs generates a kind of buoyancy in their lives, for that moment, the uncertainty is gone, and a sense of life being clear and definite seems to exists, as Kurt tells Mark a story about his notebook and ends with his dreams telling him everything is okay.
Yet, one receives a notion of uncertainty never fully going away. The drive home was quiet, and as the two gets back into the city that void seems to manifest itself again, as Mark is reluctant to go back into his home and the camera changes to Kurt wandering the streets.
I think it’s important to draw a connection between the “spaces” in all of the films we have watched thus far. First, we learned that Petzold likes to examine transitional spaces, which he states in the Cineaste review: “[The characters] consequently end up in transitional spaces, transit zones where nothingness looms on one side and the impossibility of returning to what existed in the past on the other. These are the spaces that interest me” (Abel 6). Secondly, we see this similarity in Olivier Assayas’ films, in which his characters move about in “non-places,” which are arguably the same types of spaces as Petzold’s transit zones. Kelly Reichardt also places Kurt and Mark in this type of transit/non-place in Old Joy, but in a slightly different type of way. It isn’t so much about the places they physically occupy, but rather the transitional state in their life in which they are living. In the interview with Kelly Reichardt we viewed today, she was asked about why her characters seem to always get lost, and she responded that, “Wherever I am, I always feel like I need to be someplace else [. . .] I have no sense of direction. I’m always lost somehow” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-koEJ_05YXw). With this statement, I infer that her characters take on this “lost” feeling during the films, and it is when they are lost that they occupy a transition place in their lives. Kurt and Mark literally become lost on their way to the hotsprings, but they figuratively were lost from one another as well. During their camping trip, they seem to bridge this gap between their friendship, and find their way out of the “lostness” and the non-place they’re in. Now, relating this all back to the idea of capitalism and desire, it is a little more difficult to see how capitalism plays a role in Old Joy since it isn’t as blatantly obvious as in films such as Yella and Demonlover. However, it is implied that Kurt and Mark were once close friends, perhaps with a “college buddy” type of friendship, with no cares in the world. However, Mark has moved on, and he has found a wife and is expecting a child - a typical image of the American family. Now, I know this isn’t exactly capitalism, but this “American family” is also very closely connected to the American dream of capitalism, and this is where I draw the connection between love and economy. The love examined in Old Joy is a friendly type of love between Kurt and Mark, which has been lost along the way. Kurt still seems to be in his “college buddy” type state, and the fact that Mark has moved on and matured causes some tension between them. However, this friendly love between them prevails, despite the fact that Mark has lost a little touch from what they used to know. Perhaps Mark believed that “one cannot love without money” at one time, which is why he has a wife and is expecting a child, and he presumably has a decent enough job to support his family. Eventually, as the film progresses, however, Mark realizes that his friendly love with Kurt never relied on money.
In Kelly Riechardt's OLD JOY, we experience the nostaligia of friendship, life, and adulthood. The characters Mark and Kurt are two old friends with completely different lives. The two intend to reignite their friendship on a camping trip to a hot spring that is a coming-of-middle-age sort of film. In the interview we watched in class, Riechardt emphasized her love of the square and using space in her films in all sense of the word. OLD JOY shows the effects of space in life and film. The many shots from the car as the two men travel through the city to small towns on their way to the forest are very detailed and organic. The journey reminded me of my road trip to Colorado not that long ago, how it was beautiful in a very delicate sort of way. The camera really captures how small they feel, which is really the whole point of a camping trip - it reminds you of your childhood, maybe being a boyscout even, and now these grown men are out doing it again with such a more complicated view on their lives. Kurt really emphasizes the change that is going to happen to Mark's life as he's about to have a kid. "I've never had a mistake that I couldn't take back," he says, and acknowledges his bravery in becoming a father. Meanwhile, Kurt is a heavy marijuana user and it's clear that he's having trouble sorting out what he wants to do with his wife. I don't believe it was clear if Kurt had a family or girlfriend but I assumed that he was just kind of on his own which was affirmed in the end when Mark drops Kurt off at his home and Kurt really has no where to go or be, he wanders around the city looking for someone or somewhere but what?
I spent most of the film deciding where this movie was going to take me. It seemed kind of 'genre-less' or as I coined earlier 'coming-of-middle-age' but for a while I didn't know how crazy things were going to get. I thought for a while that KR was going to take the film to a sort of Blair Witch kind of way. When they get lost, Mark goes out to make a phone call and comes back to tell Kurt, "the sign up there is literally blank." Then Kurt has a sort of anxiety attack that really puts Mark, and the audience in an awkward position. Is he going to snap? Then they go out for breakfast and the waitress is also clueless as to where the springs is supposed to be and I wondered if it even existed at all but it was a very mellow and safe. I wish this film would've gave me something more to think about.
What I want to focus my blog post about is the ending. While watching the movie, I thought it was strange that we were shown Kurt wandering around the city. Also, why weren't we shown Mark? Did Riechardt's budget run out at that point? It just didn't feel finished to me right away.
But after thinking about it some more, I made some sense of it.
During the entire movie we see this odd character, Kurt. As the plot progresses, Kurt becomes more at home the more the duo gets away from the city. And whether Kurt is gay doesn't really change the story or the meaning behind it. So, that shouldn't matter. I saw it as him becoming comfortable with himself and his friend. Or finding a sense of home.
When we see Kurt in the streets, he seems lost. Like just a wandering person with no sense of direction. Even when he interacts with the homeless person it was weird and awkward. This didn't look like a place that Kurt could find the peace that he did out in the woods and hot springs. That is why I think we were only shown Kurt at the end of the film.
Well, one answer to your first question may be that Mark has an already established life, which the film opened on. He has a wife, a home, a dog, amongst other things. Although his life is far from perfect, as his habitual listening to downtrodden, political radio could represent his own ideological struggle, his life is in relative order, as opposed to Kurt who we aren't allowed to see what his life is like. Some would assume that he's living a sort of bohemian lifestyle, as evidenced by his stories of traveling and recreational use of weed. However, I can't shake the feeling that these elements are used to make us assume things of Kurt, who is wholly unpredictable throughout the film. It's only fitting that his path should be unpredictable to the audience as well, as if to allow the audience to empathize with Mark through lack of information about Kurt. As the film ends, it may be assumed that this is Kurt and Mark's last meeting, a feeling that runs parallel with the audience's relationship with Kurt. The film ends, and we're left wondering what he's going to do after the trip. So, in a strange way I believe that the ending is actually more representative of Mark than Kurt, documenting Kurt's fading away from his life. Manhola Dargus' N.Y. Times review seems to come to the same conclusion that the two will never reunite as well, which seems probable.
There is one thing I would disagree with you on. I believe that Kurt's sexuality does in fact change the story of the film. Perhaps not radically, but that in itself speaks to how each character feels about each other's sexuality. I think that Elle did a great post about this, so I won't try to repeat what she's said, but Kurt's sexuality and how forward he is changes some of the scenes in the film. Keep in mind, in the 9 years since the release of Old Joy, the public opinion of Homosexuality has changed drastically, and seeing as Reichardt is prone to making political statements in her films (see the use of political radio in Old Joy and the discussion on making a political film in the interview), we may be able to see that Kurt and Mark's relationship may be making a statement about homosexuality and the perception of masculinity in the mid 2000's.
Regardless, if Mark's attraction to women is genuine (and not to leave out the possibility of bisexuality), His emotional distance to Kurt changes context depending on Kurt's sexuality. Perhaps Kurt and Mark were in a relationship before the events of the film in their youth, and Mark broke off to be with his wife. Even if Kurt just wants to be friends with Mark on the trip, that changes that atmosphere radically. I guess in the end, it depends on how you view heterosexuality and homosexuality, but I think that if in 2015 members of the LGBTQ community are still struggling for recognition, than the LGBTQ climate in 2006 echoes through the performances of Mark and Kurt on Old Joy. That's my two cents in it. Regardless of whether or not Kurt is gay, I was touched by how honest and intimate their relationship was, which is almost never depicted in film.
I agree with a lot of what has been said regarding Kurt's sexuality but I would take the stance that it is not important to this story. I feel that this was more a coming-of-age film than a film with some sort of ambiguous homosexual message. I saw two friends who had drifted apart on completely different trajectories. This seemed to be unsettling for both of them but they manifested these feelings in different ways. Kurt coped with drugs and alcohol and living in the past while Mark was quite a bit more reserved. I felt Mark was calm on the surface because he was trying to be the man he felt he needed to be or was expected to be now that he was about to begin a family. However, he still didn't seem natural. Kurt couldn't live in the present and see the world around him for what it was, which is why he only spoke of the past or his future plans that he couldn't even say with true conviction. The final scene where Kurt is wandering around aimlessly confirmed my thoughts for me. Whether or not Kurt was a homosexual didn't change the message for me, but it does add another layer to the film and another topic for discussion.
The end of the film confused me too, until I realized that Kurt, at least in some sense, is homeless. It is apparent from early in the film that Kurt is a disheveled wanderer, but only after looking at the film as a whole is the grim nature of his situation evident.
The signs of Kurt's homelessness are first and foremost seen when he is introduced. Mark comes to pick him up at "an empty house" (Hall, 69) and is initially surprised to not find Kurt there. When Kurt does show up, the audience sees a man with a bushy beard and unremarkable, simple clothing. He is carrying a green cooler and hauling a wagon with a TV inside. This odd assortment of items did strike me as something that homeless individuals stereotypically carry, but I forgot that initial impression as the film went on.
Nevertheless, even in that very scene, the clues continued. When Kurt opens the back door of his van, the viewer sees that it is stuffed full of "clutter and collection" (Hall, 78). Kurt then suggests that they take Mark's vehicle since his does not do very well in the mountains. Later, in front of a nondescript building, Kurt asks Mark for ten dollars, presumably to buy cheap drugs.
As isolated incidents, none of these moments are significant, but together, they "spell out someone who is unreliable, opportunistic, confused, and lazy" (Hall, 69). First, I suggest that Kurt's van is full of stuff because that is the only place he has to store his belongings. He is, in essence, living out of his van while moving "in and out of" the lives of friends (Hall, 67). When the two first talk on the phone, Mark asks Kurt where he is staying. We do not hear a response, but given the fact that Kurt did not have ten dollars for drugs, it is likely he did not have enough money to stay anywhere, so if he could not find a friend to take him in, he slept in his van. Thus, he told Mark where to go to pick him up, but was intentionally late (Hall, 69) so that Mark would not see that he was not staying in the house, but his vehicle.
Second, as Kurt did not have ten dollars, he was not likely able to afford fuel for his van. So, I believe that his idea of taking Mark's station wagon was because his van could not handle the terrain as, but because he simply could not afford gas.
Of course, all these observations are strengthened cinematographic-ally by Kurt's final scene, when "the camera zooms in capturing Kurt wandering aimlessly, as if in a daze, unable to even decide what direction he should take" (Hall, 82). "Reichardt wants to remind viewers that Kurt is socially undesirable" and does so by filming him from a distance in this scene (Hall, 82).
As a homeless man (to some degree or other), Kurt epitomizes the uncertainty of modern life as described both by Zygmunt Bauman (Bauman, 2) and the talk radio hosts at the end of "Old Joy." " When you notice that housing costs, health care costs, and energy costs are exploding, you’re talking about things that make up the overwhelming share of the budget of an ordinary family. And so the combination of the uncertainty of the future and the pressure on the present create this move." Like those Bauman describes as having no "insurance against individual failure" (Bauman, 2), Kurt's life is uncertain, even down to where he will sleep at night.
In Kelly Reichardt's Reverse Shot interview, she states, "Hopefully a lot of what is coming through [in regards to the characters of Kurt and Mark] has to do with their body language, the way they put up a tent together or walk across a log and the spectator can read as much into that as in what they are saying." In this blog, I will provide one definition of both Kurt and Mark by analyzing one scene, which also happens to be mentioned by Reichardt in her interview: the sleeping bag folding scene.
Mark and Kurt wake up after camping and sharing a tent for the night. They both remain completely silent, giving the scene an overarching feeling of tension. Mark is up and out of the tent first, followed shortly thereafter by Kurt who fiddles with his shoes for a while at the tent opening. Mark painstakingly rolls up his sleeping bag as to get it back in its bag. Kurt urinates off to the side, then, taking note of what Mark is doing, folds his sleeping bag haphazardly.
I cannot help but see this scene as that of a father and son camping together. Mark would here be the father figure, as he takes initiative in getting moving while Kurt seems more lackluster about getting on with the day. Mark plays into being a stereotypical adult, paying attention to the detail of rolling up his sleeping bag. Kurt, in comparison, sits tinkering with his shoes (a common thing young children do) and seems to imitate Mark by trying to fold his sleeping bag neatly.
As the viewer can infer throughout the film, Mark is nervous about entering fatherhood. This contributes to the tension of the sleeping bag scene- it's a subconscious reminder that his life as a singleton is shrinking rapidly and he has no power to control it.
This is further backed by the notion of Mark's phone call with his wife that takes place almost immediately after the scene I've just analyzed. By talking with his wife, asking her what she did last night, etc., Mark is reminded and comforted by the fact that he doesn't have to go fatherhood alone.
Of the reading I did to prepare for today's screening of "Old Joy," the quote from the Rodriguez-Ortega article about Reichardt's empty spaces in the film that a few of us have already cited dictated my viewing of the film. I wasn't so much trying to make up my own meaning the entire time- this does not interest me very much. Instead, I paid attention to how she created those opportunities.
The minimalistic use of dialogue has already been discussed in great detail, both here and in the texts. I'd like to focus instead on how she shot the film (framing, angles, etc.), and how they contributed to a sense of emptiness into which the viewer and project their own meaning.
There was one shot in particular that immediately stood out to me and has been at the front of my mind since- when Mark was packing his car at home to leave. Only the trunk was in the shot, and barely so. Mark moved in and out of the shot until he pulls the car out of the shot, and then the camera continued to linger there for a few moments afterwards.
To me, how Reichardt decided to do this was largely affected by her decision to leave lots of room for personal interpretation. If anything, this particular example almost seemed to be this disposition taken to its logical extreme: it looked like she was reluctant to even film the characters of the movie. How much more room could you give someone to create their own meaning than barely providing a shot to interpret?
There were other good examples of filming techniques used to this end, but this was far and away my favorite. Speaking in more general terms, her frequent use of long shots (the example above being an example) and characterization of the forrest, both discussed in some of the reading for today, are good empty spaces on the screen that demand meaning be added to them because there is so little going on.
Overall, I enjoyed this film quite a bit and I'm excited to see more of Reichardt's work.
I noticed the space also, but more in terms of the forest as a character. In Old Joy, there were the two main characters, but I also noticed that with all of the cuts to the trees and birds that the forest also became a major character through the film. Of course, I knew that it was going to be before I had gone into this film because of the text, but the sheer amount of screen time the forest received was astonishing.
The awkward moments between the two men would always involve a lot of cuts to the forest. For instance, when they finally reached the hot springs and Kurt starting giving Mark a massage the scene cuts straight to a few frames of the pools of water and birds around. I knew this had to be important because Reichardt repeatedly pointed out in her interview that she preferred long shots, and that she wasn’t even comfortable doing montage editing. “This is one of the central ideas of the film: they get lost in the forest and they become part of it and one with nature” (61).
The constant back and forth cuts between the two men talking and nature seemed to include the forest as a character that “had a voice” during the conversations. Not that the forest actually said anything, but the two male characters didn’t speak much either. It was that comfortable silence that communicates through glances and body language more than speech.
The forest was always the background, diegetic noise in the film. It constantly was going the entire time that the two men were there, but it never overpowered their conversations. Even in the hot spring scene, when the water was running, it was still softer than the men’s voices. This shows how the forest as a character was still disconnected from the men. It’s gives the feeling of isolation, and almost a feminine quality that reminds me of the male’s gaze in reverse.
Reichardt talked about the journals of the pioneers and the differences between the men’s and the women’s in her interview, and I couldn’t help notice that she used a lot of what she had said about the female’s diaries during the forest shots. The everyday tasks that even need to be done in the forest give weight to the idea of the “female forest.” I’m interested to see if any of you felt that the forest as a character gave the strong feeling of isolation and feministic qualities.
In her interview that we watched in class Reichardt talks about her use of the long shot. She talks about how she like likes the long shot because she likes to be able to watch the characters make their way through the screen and eventually leave the shot. She mentioned a certain beauty about it and I think this is what stood out to me the most out of what she said so I was already focusing on it when we started this movie. Focusing on it from the beginning, I was really able to see what she was talking about in her interview and I think it was used very powerfully in this film.
One example of this was when Mark arrived at Kurts house the first time. We watch him enter the scene and then simply interact with it. It was an especially long take but I didn't really mind it as a viewer at all because it gave us the opportunity to experience the place that Kurt lives, and the type of person Kurt is (not being home but inviting someone to come over), before we actually get the chance to meet him and know more about him. Mark was able to make his way through the scene, out and in again, before it finally cut.
Another way this type of shot is effective in this film is simply in the environment it is shot in. Oregon is a very raw naturally beautiful state and Reichardt is able to capture it better with these long shots. She allows the audience to really take it all in without losing focus on the movie itself. An example of this is when Kurt and Mark are hiking. We are able to keep up with what the characters are doing while at the same time really experiencing the beauty of their surroundings. She uses the long shot so well throughout the film.
I like the idea that her characters take on this lost feeling during the films, especially in the end of the film when Mark drops off Kurt. As Kurt starts walking the streets I noticed that the camera is only focused on Kurt and the image behind Kurt is blurry, which makes the character seem lost in the city. Also, there are a lot of different camera angles and footage from a distance. At one point you feel like you’re in the actual forest as a bug is going down a tree. For a film that had two main characters and a dog this film was interesting to me. Starting with the beginning of the trip, when Mark is leaving and he is listening to the President talking about the role that democrats haven’t played. Then when he was leaving he turns it back on, even though he doesn’t seem interested in what is being said, you understand what era they were living in.
Going back to her characters being lost, especially Kurt. When I watched this film, I was under the impression that not only was Kurt lost but he was lonely. It is interesting to point out that Kurt may be a homosexual because I didn’t see it that way when I watched the film. I just assumed that Kurt was perhaps jealous of what Mark had, especially after Kurt watches Mark outside of the restaurant while he is talking to his wife. Elle brings up a good point that the massage scene cuts off to them walking back to the car. Either way, whether Kurt is homosexual or lonely and jealous of what Mark has, I think that both of the characters are lost. Mark doesn’t seem too excited about his baby coming and it seems that Kurt doesn’t have an exact career path that he wants to take or doesn’t have any dreams as he was talking about his physics classes. They in fact do get lost during this trip but Mark doesn’t seemed too annoyed with Kurt, he kind of just goes with the flow, as he said to his wife on the phone “You know how Kurt is.” You can indicate that Kurt has been lost for a while but Mark has always been his friend. Overall, I enjoyed OLD JOY, especially since their budget was $300,000.
Old Joy (2006) begins with a shot of a small bird standing in a house gutter, followed by a close-up of Mark sitting in his yard fruitlessly trying to meditate. The sound of drumming is intertwined with the sound of traffic and birds chirping. As Jason briefly commented on his post about the importance of sound, I would like to expand on it—particularly as related to the quote by Kurt, “It’s not like there’s any big difference between the forest and the city though. You know what I mean? It’s all one huge thing now. There is trees in the city and garbage in the forest. What’s the big difference, you know?” and part of the introduction in “Filmmaker Magazine,” where it is observed that, “Kurt and Mark have left the city, but no matter how far they travel into the woods, the echo of their present lives, obligation and worries will find them.”
With music used sparingly and silence playing a key role, the “echo” is carried through the film by the presence of birds and their song—present in tight, centered close-ups three times. Kurt’s observation about the tainting, the infiltration, and the merging of the urban with the natural, gives a sense of inescapability even when protected and emerged in nature. Once they’ve arrived at the hot springs, Mark and Kurt are lost inside the green space, and indeed, the birds singing, accompanied by dripping and running water, and the wind create a relaxed and mellow environment. A sequence of static, close-up shots of the falling water, accompanied by a long-take of Lucy pacing through the trees and the outhouse structure, further set the pace and create a sense of stability and isolation.
Even when Kurt rises from the water and goes to the benches, the sound continues uninterrupted and unaltered. The camera goes for another sequence of close-ups of nature pausing at a perched bird. The bird gets ready to set flight and when it is gone, the trembling branch is what the camera is focused on when Kurt’s voice infiltrates the natural world. The moment, like the bird, is gone with the introduction of mundane problems that Kurt proceeds to narrate. He is bringing in the echo of their lives into this safe space. In Rodriguez-Ortega’s piece, Reichardt mentions that key to the film was the idea that the characters, “get lost in the forest and they become part of it and one with nature. At the same time, they become a bit more vulnerable with each other, and then the forest just starts to take over.” While this is successfully achieved by the film up to this point, the separation of the two worlds, doesn’t survive the break of silence. In this sense, they are part of that world, as long as there is not engagement with outside problems. Kurt’s breakage of silence is an invitation for the echoes to come flying back. Like the third bird featured in Old Joy, the crow perched at the gas station on their way to the hot springs, the narration of their life is a watching presence that is embodied in the most isolated places, and whose notes one can’t escape.
One thing that was really evident in our first Kelly Reichardt film Old Joy is her use of long camera shots and attention to setting. Reichardt focuses on small or mundane task with her camera. Like watching Mark roll up a sleeping bag for 60 seconds. When a camera shot is left long by Reichardt, the scene effects an audience that is normally used to Hollywood quick-cuts and makes the audience feel as if they are lingering in a scene too long. NYT Old Joy movie review had an interesting take on the film “There is a universal aspect to this story about memory and loss, and how we use the past to take refuge from the present. You can’t go home again; sometimes, you can’t even share a bowl of pot the way you once did. Yet if Mark and Kurt’s excursion resembles any number of classic adventures across time and space, the film is also insistently about this specific moment in time and space. Namely, an America in which progressive radio (actually, snippets from Air America) delivers the relentless grind of bad news that Mark can only listen to without comment and with a face locked in worry, a face on which Ms. Reichardt invites us to project the shell shock, despair and hopelessness of everyone else listening in across the country. (Dargis, 2006) Tension added by the long shots had me waiting for a huge moment of conflict between Mark and Kurt, but it never came. There was conflict in the story, it was just shown subtly in the camera. For example. Kurt is jealous of Mark’s wedding ring, constantly ringing phone and recent success (or maybe his romantic interest in Mark as Emily’s post says above.) Mark however seems envious of Kurt’s freedom and carefree attitude. The ending of the film is not climactic, but realistic. Not a lot of emotion is shown, and the two friends part ways and continue leading there separate lives. Mark joins his wife inside of his home and closes the door while Kurt wanders the streets for what looked like hours destination uncertain. Kurt giving the stranger change was a great gesture to show that Kurt is not someone who seems to care much for material possessions. I feel like the two are complete opposites as friend so they balance each other well.
The use of water in this movie was the biggest thing I noticed. Especially the scene when both Mark and Kurt are in the hot spring. The camera follows the water back up from the drips, to the tub, to the spring, and lastly to the river (from 1:01:37 - 1:02:00).
In my head, she uses this image as a metaphor of time. While Mark and Kurt were old friends and had great times together in the past, they cannot reconnect. They've diverted into different streams. Water doesn't stop flowing just like time.
I think the pace of the movie allows you to think about what is going on more. Your mind bounces on a few ideas before she cuts to the next scene.
I thought the long lingering shots of the film reflected the plot line of the film. Both Mark and Kurt are happy to go on this trip and try to reconnect on some level. It seems that when the connection doesn't come back they are forced to linger in the past much like the camera.
Kurt says, “Sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy” and Old Joy basis itself around this statement. There is a sense of sorrow from Mark at the very beginning. He and his wife have normal spats as any relationship, but the difference is that there is a baby on the way. That in it can cause problems, being scared, and sorrow for the life he’ll never have. Meeting up with Kurt seems like the failure or success of being happy or sad the rest of his life. Gus Van Sant mentions that decay is present throughout Reichardt’s films and proves that by using the decay of Mark and Kurt’s friendship. This is prominent throughout their trip and slowly, but surely proves to Mark that the sorrow or sadness isn’t going away.
Specific points that show this are the moment of silence at the bonfire and in the Hot Spring when Kurt is telling a story that turns into a dream, but you can tell Mark isn’t even listening. Mark is caught up in the sorrow or being worn-out. The New York Times review said that there was this “lingering sense of regret that hangs over the men with one pristinely framed image after another.” Kurt seems to be involved in the conversation and trying to make an effort in the friendship. Mark on the other hand seems to have different things on his mind other than the time with his friend and his dog. He shows no change or effort to make a difference in his friendship or his life for that matter. The ending only affirms that he hasn’t change. Immediately after dropping Kurt off, the radio goes back on and says nothing other than something about “the uncertainty about the future.” Mark hasn’t been enlightened by the trip, he is still listening to the same talk show and has that same dull look in his eyes.
Kurt is alive though, he is taking a new light to things and the Hot Spring gave him a new outlook on life. It may have ended his relationship with Mark, but it seems as though his “joy” was rejuvenated. Reichardt ends the film with Kurt’s eyes looking out and up, giving a sense of hope that maybe that experience helped at least one of them out.
Old Joy starts with sorrow end with sorrow and a little bit of hope.
I agree that the 'worn-out joy' statement made in the movie encapsulated the message of this film. Although you have a much more optimistic outlook for Kurt than I do after watching the film. It seemed to me that he was just as lost, if not more so, in the final scene as he was when we met him. Kurt could tell that he was drifting away from Mark but never did anything more than contemplate their past relationship. He never offered a resolve and in the final scene I saw him doing nothing more than wondering around aimlessly. The film ends with him standing next to a homeless man. If I look at that scene without watching the rest of the movie I would see nothing other than 2 homeless men on a street corner, and that was the lasting impression I got of him. I'm fascinated by your interpretation of that scene. I was caught up in him walking past the homeless man then spinning in a circle and awkwardly returning to him to give him change that I didn't notice the film ended with Kurt looking out and up as you put it. Interesting take.
Among all the films that we’ve watched, Old Joy was by far the toughest film to analyze. This could be part of Kelly Reichardt’s style of film making. During the interview, Reichardt stated that she tends to emphasize more on the process of things and Old Joy clearly portrays that. The whole movie shows the process of nature, escape and change.
The friendship between Kurt and Mark was definitely unique. Unlike the films by Petzold and Assayas, Reichardt emphasized more on the characters. The viewers are given more insights and backstory about them. From there, we know that Kurt and Mark has been friends for a long time, most probably since high school or college. However, as years go by, change was inevitable. Mark grew and became more mature. He was successful (as Kurt seems to always praise his work) and is about to become a dad. Kurt, on the other hand, still has trouble making a living. He doesn’t have confidence in himself. This shows that they both live in totally different worlds and Kurt notices that. Another emphasis on change was through the process of Mark accepting the fact that he’s about to become a father. Since the start, I notice that he yearns for an escape and peace. He constantly go on camping trips out in the forest where it is quite. I feel like he’s trying to escape his responsibilities as a husband and father. Nonetheless, at the end, he seems more accepting about his life. I noticed that there were 3 types of birds that Reichardt took shots of. There was a small-looking bird at the start, then a crow followed by another black bird. The birds could indirectly symbolizes Mark and his growth.
Change was also shown through Reichardt’s cinematic qualities. There were a lot of long-take shots on the surroundings. First, we get the view of the city followed by a farm and then, the forest. I guess this indirectly shows the process of their roadtrip and also the change of civilization. “Also, throughout the film, as in River of Grass, an environmental subtext is subtle but clear; she juxtaposes images of nature against civilization and technology, hinting at the damage done to natural resources while reveling in the beauty of the Oregon forest” (Focus 65). I noticed that the campsite where Kurt and Mark stayed the night at was filled with trash, polluted and deserted. We only see that in the morning. During the night, it looks like any normal campsite. I find this interesting because it gives an awareness on what has become of the environment and nature’s natural resources, just as stated in the passage above.
Moreover, going back to what we discussed in class last week about how movies tend to showcase a problem and solution. Well, in this movie, everything seems very vague but the viewer’s know that there is a problem. There is a problem with their friendship and Mark’s life. Nonetheless, at the end, they seem to have a sense of self-discovery and closure but the solution was not emphasized. Maybe from there, Reichardt is trying to make room for the viewer’s to interpret?
This film was such a wonderful breath of fresh air after all of the fast, loud, and angry films we watched last week. Out of everything we’ve seen in this class, I think that this one felt the most realistic to me, with Clean being the only other main contender. Everything in this film was just so much more relaxed and simple, it was really great to sit back and enjoy the peaceful scenery and low-key character development. Old Joy wasn’t trying to do or prove anything about itself, it just existed, there for us to soak in and enjoy. It communicated its feelings and messages clearly, concisely, and without any extra gimmicks or flair. Not every film can achieve that, and not every film should, but I think Old Joy pulled it off perfectly.
This entire movie seemed strangely familiar. Not that I’ve seen other films like it, but that the locations, the events, the characters, everything about it reminded me of things I’ve seen and experienced in real life before. I got a huge wave of nostalgia for the cross-country road trips I used to take with my family when I was younger, and I even texted my mom after class and asked her if she and I could go on a mother-daughter road trip up to the Rockies at the end of the summer. That’s how much this movie spoke to me - it made me long for things I once knew and experienced, which I think interestingly paralleled what was going on with Kurt and Mark. Judging by the comfort of their shared silences, it’s pretty easy to tell that they’ve been friends for a long time (the dialogue suggests since at least high school). They wanted, for a short period of time, to get back to that, to re-experience each other’s company and friendship like they did when they were younger. Of course, there was a little bit of an awkward air that suggested things weren’t exactly like they were before, but it didn’t seem like too big of a deal to them or to me. It was just the way things were. And really, that’s okay.
What’s great about the writing and direction of this film is that we’re never given any explicit backstory or expository monologues about who they are - everything about their personalities and places in life is shown through their actions and interactions. I think the juxtaposition of their situations was also pretty interesting. Mark is settling down, starting a family. Kurt is wandering, lost, searching for and finding happiness in many different places. This film isn’t about them finding their solutions, but instead offers a brief, beautiful glimpse of them just mulling these things over together out in the woods, finding a brief moment of serenity before heading back to their normal routines a little more clear headed than they were before.
I think a lot of very interesting observations have been made about this film by other classmates, including Kurt potentially being homosexual, whether or not that matters, how the distance between the two friends is summated by the title, and how the cinematography reinforces the feelings of nostalgia.
I thoroughly enjoyed Old Joy. It just felt good to watch. Much like a trip away from the city and into the forest, less isn’t always more - sometimes, less is just the right amount.
I want to focus on KR's camera work and more specifically framing. During her interview we watched in class she spoke of how she prefers the 4:3 ratio to more mainstream aspect ratios because it allows her to show more sky and foreground. After I heard her speak on this I made a note to watch for examples throughout Old Joy. I found that she meticulously and beautifully framed nearly every scene from beginning to end and let the actors and scenery do the work. From the early scenes of Mark and his wife in their backyard to the shots of the camera steadily filming the treeline as it passed overhead while Mark and Kurt drove through the woods, the camera seemed to always be at rest while everything in the frame was telling the story. I found this to be a refreshingly organic change of pace from the relentlessly active camera work of Assayass' films we watched last week. KR shows that you don't have to have a big budget to create something beautiful.
Just to be clear, however: KR's reference to a 4:3 frame refers to Meek's Cut-off. Her other films are not shot in this aspect ratio. But your observations regarding her framing in OJ are on target.
Okay, so my take on this movie may be a little odd but I believe there are no wrong answers so here goes.
ReplyDeleteI feel that Old Joy paints a picture that Kurt is a homosexual.
Now here me out. There is this idea called "queering a text" which I used in this film. So often when homosexuality is not explicitly implied that we as an audience often assume the character is a heterosexual. Thus the idea of queering a text is when you attempt to find the queer potential in a form of media/literature. Now being gay is never explicitly stated in the film. We know that Mark is married and just views Kurt as a good friend, but the film paints Kurt to be different. When Kurt is hanging out with Mark he is constantly explictilty stating heterosexual things after a potential homosexual statement. While driving into the mountains Kurt discussing a male friend that he had the most amazing time with, and Kurt discusses this man fondly but quickly beings talking about the beautiful women and how "i think he got laid" in an attempt to heterosexualize the conversation. We can also see this to be evident while the two men are about to go to bed while on the mountain. Kurt asks if he can sleep in the tent with Mark, to which Mark agrees stating that it is,"a two man tent, and the dog will be in there too." Now two grown men sharing a tent could come across to be read as gay so Kurt quickly says, "At least the dog is a girl." Again, an attempt to define is heterosexuality. This seems like an attempt to bog down certain emotions Kurt might be feeling in regards to his own sexuality. We see a drunk and possibly stoned Kurt breaking down by the fire saying, "i'm not fine." Now this is where I began to queer the text. Having this emotional break down and reflecting inward and self-loathing is a theme present in many queer individuals. Our society is heteronomative and anything that goes against that standard is often and sadly shunned. And for Kurt to be an older man and not a teenager these feelings of repression could be extremely strong.
Then when the film eventually leads us to the hot springs we find both Kurt and Mark getting naked and laying in the wooden tubs. During this scene Kurt looks at Mark in a very sensual way, suggesting that Kurt has feelings for Mark. The climax of this scene is when Kurt gives Mark a massage. Now we see Mark become highly uncomfortable by this, presumably because he thinks/knows that Kurt is gay. However he eventually relaxes and the camera pans to his wedding ring which slowly dips into the water hiding it from sight.
This is what drives my theory home. This film was made in 2006 and today but especially then the wedding ring represented the union between a man and woman. Luckily that archaic definition is evolving but nevertheless we see the wedding ring fade away, this suggest that he is hiding his marriage in order to have this homoerotic moment with Kurt.
Now we don't see what happens after this massage. The camera just cuts to the two friends walking back to the car. I believe this is the directors way of leaving it ambiguous and letting the viewers decide for themselves. That is precisely why the word gay is never mentioned. When the two friends part ways we see a complete shift in tone. The soft and calming music is replaced with talk radio and Kurt is clearly lost in the big city.
I don't know if Kelly Reichardt intended for this to be a plot line. I don't know if she wanted this to be read as a queer film. However it is interesting how when you replace the assumed heterosexuality with homosexuality we are left with a completely different story.
I think this is an entirely valid take om the film. If we wanted to return to last week's conversation we could approach this question through the lens of authorial intentionality (but which author: KR or Jon Raymond?). In this case we would have to ask them for their intention and then trust they speak the truth. Or we could approach it from the idea that the audience actively makes meaning--which is what Elle does; inthis case we have to balance textual cues with theories of reading as well as the background we bring to a text. What Elle doesn't--fortunately--is exemplify thefalsityof her first statement, expressed as a belief. There are wrong answers: 1+1 is not 3 (unless you redefine the enitre mathematical system), so saying it is 3 is false. Old Joy is not about my cat Melville. Such a statement would beequally false. So whether or not there are false answers is not a matter of belief or opinion. Elle offers an interpretation, which she supports with textual evidence. She makes a plausible case--one thatis not indisputable but reasonable. That is dicidedly different than saying the filmis about my cat, which would be an insubstantiable statement and thus incorrect.
DeleteThe question to ask--rather than debating whether or not Kurt is really gay (ultimately that cannot be proven one way or the other)--is what difference it makes, and for what, whether we give the text a queer or straight reading. One question to ask, if we queered the text: why did KR not make this more explicit? Why did she not thematize it? And what effects does this decisio have? and vice versa: if we went with an hetero reading,then we could ask why KR inserts such "queer" clues, and to what end/effect. Note the difference: this is no longer about being correct or not but about what difference it makes--for something--that the filmmaker chose the cinematic strategies she did.
While I think that your argument for queering a text and breaking away from assuming heterosexuality is a valid (and incredibly important) one, this might not be best when applied to Old Joy (2004). To touch on Professor Abel's point of author intentionality, (along with last week's discussion on author's intention versus audience's reception), I turn to the readings. In the interview by Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega, on speaking of the content the short story from which she adapted Old Joy, Reichardt states that, “Mark is not married in the short story either. He is single, so he and Kurt are closer to each other in the story; their worlds are not so far apart. John Raymond wrote about a very personal and nuanced friendship, about the elusiveness of friendship.” This pairs well with Sam Littman’s statement about gender and character complexity in Senses of Cinema where he observes that, “films focusing on men of the kind we might know or meet in the course of our daily lives are rarities…It’s the sensitivity of Reichardt’s male portraits that so surprises; these characters feel close to home.”
DeleteThat is not to invalidate your whole point since she also states, “There’s a lot of space in his writing and in my filmmaking for people to grab on to what they want and identify what they want. I can see two people walking out of the movie and feel completely different about it. There’s space to create this kind of encounter” (Rodriguez-Ortega). Nevertheless, the conscious choice to have Mark be married is purposeful. Its main target seems to be the elimination of sexual tension, in order to open up a space for ambiguity and possibility (which she commented on in the interview we watched today). This being my second viewing of Old Joy, I still regard the hot spring massage scene as a beautifully rendered erotic scene, and I am sure many will support your point, and point to it as evidence of homoerotic undertones. Still, I think it is yet another example of the ingrained tensions of gender expectations and performances. Even in the isolation of the forest, societal gender roles and behaviors problematize a true male-to-male connection. To queer the text would be to minimize the importance, reality, and possibility of an intimate heterosexual friendship in today's world.
Thank you Marco! I'm glad you liked my post. I think if we queered the text KR did this subtlety on purpose to not be like the other queer films that were being released in 2006? Or perhaps the idea of being closeted and repressed with one's sexuality is something the individual often keeps hidden and doesn't speak about. Perhaps KR is referencing that idea in regards to a queer reading. And if this was created in a heterosexual lens perhaps these moments are just showing how close to male friends can be. Often our society takes anything intimate between two males to be interpreted as gay so perhaps she was simply challenging the norm?
DeleteIn this blog post i would like to talk about two points. The first being something that Kelly Reichardt referenced in the video Marco showed us today. In the video, she stressed the importance of keeping the camera in the same position and letting the characters move in and out of the shot, instead of the shot following the characters move around. This seems quite opposite to the camerawork we saw in Assayas's films, where the camera would constantly be moving, panning, running beside characters. That's not to say that the camera doesn't move in Old Joy, but that it stays put in one place whilst panning around. I'm guessing most of the shots were shot from a tripod although there were some handheld shots in the car rides. I think one of the best examples of this type of camera work is in the very last shot of the film, in which Kurt is shown on screen and then he suddenly jumps out of frame. The camera tries to pan to follow him but is unable and he disappears. This type of camerawork i think adds a certain amount of nostalgia to the film, as if the camera's perspective was limited like a person's, and some people sadly go missing from the shot.
ReplyDeleteTo a certain degree, this type of camerawork builds onto my next point in this blogpost, namely, the meaning of the title. Perhaps one of the main ways of reading the title is as a reference to the friendship between Kurt and Mark, who appear to be lifelong friends but have found their paths to have grown quite distant. The reasons behind their lull in friendship could be due to economics, or Kurt's inability to become an adult, or Mark's priority to prepare to raise a family. But no matter what the reason, the purpose behind the trip is to rediscover their friendship, to go on adventure like they did she they were young. And through this narrative of friendship, I believe Reichardt is able to focus on the true subject of this film, namely, nostalgia. The future looms over both characters but most of their time is spent thinking about the past. I really enjoyed how slim the timeline of this movie was. In a movie like Clean, the narrative felt like it plays out as long as necessarily has to. In Old Joy, it's as if the movie went on for a modest amount of time allotted to it. In away, nostalgia, or more broadly, coping with the past, is what i see all of those movies we have seen so far class having in common.
Old Joy is simply impressive. It was shot under two weeks, edited in Reichardt’s apartment, and with the extremely small budget the six-person crew was very small. The production may have been modest, but it’s the premise surrounding friendship, time, and space that creates most of the impact in this story.
ReplyDeleteFrom the plot and characters, to the cinematography and sound, there are many great connections to the title of this film. Reichardt shows us how there is something sad about getting older and growing apart from friends. During a scene when Kurt tells Mark about his dream he says “Sorrow is just warn out Joy,” this really sums up how I think Mark and Kurt feel about each other in their older age. Their distant relationship reflects the title well. The experiences Kurt and Mark had in the past together simply can’t match up to where they’re at in life now. The fact that Mark has a wife and baby on the way and Kurt is in his 30’s still wandering loosely a drift makes their relationship seem distant. It’s as if the camping gear Mark stores in his shed only comes out when someone like Kurt is back in town. Camping should be relaxing and enjoyable, but just like Mark’s relationship with Kurt, it fades away when work and family become priority.
The cinematography backs this up nicely too. Old Joy was shot on 16mm and converted to 35mm, filmed using almost all natural light, which gives it an authentic vintage tone. The coloring seems slightly de-saturated giving it the sense of ‘old’. There are a couple of scenes when Mark leaves Kurt to speak to his wife on the phone. One scene particularly, as the two are lost and traveling to find the hot spring, we watch Mark take a call from his wife and as he walks away to talk to her, our perspective is given from Kurt’s POV, where we watch patiently from the car. Just by composition and use of silence alone, this POV gives the audience a way to honestly feel the distance between these characters.
The pacing and sound are something worth noting as well. The pacing throughout Old Joy is similar to that of Jericho and Yella. It is slow, but during an interview with Filmmaker, Reichardt states that she likes to use a lot of open space in her films in order to leave room for the audience to inflect their own ideas about the characters. This sense of space is added when Mark and Kurt don’t communicate. It allows us to pick up on what they would be thinking and feeling. With the sound, the score by Yo La Tengo really only plays when the two are traveling in the car, otherwise most of what we hear are diegetic sounds of wind and trees and birds chirping.
In the Senses of Cinema review on Reichardt, it’s noted that she doesn’t often fill the frame with a lot of symbolism in her films. But in a few different sequences, the birds that come and go into close framing, in this context, adds to a sense of freedom that Mark and Kurt are searching for by getting away from the city. This sense of freedom however, doesn’t quite seem to be fully reached. I think of the opening scene when Mark is trying to meditate as a good reflection to their trip to the mountains. Mark meditates, but the stress around him, (sound of the city, flies, etc.) prevents him from doing this. Mark and Kurt’s trip to the mountains felt similar in that Kurt tries to tell Mark how much he misses their old friendship, but stops himself before going any further. They both sort of loom throughout their trip as if the freedom they enjoyed together in the past can’t ever be the same on top of the stresses and change of growing older.
This is a really nice cinematic analysis. Well done!
DeletePerhaps one of the more “relaxing” films we have screened so far in class, Old Joy certainly tells a captivating story about friendship that most can relate to. What a brilliant way to stage a rekindling of friendship by having a camping trip—a “man’s” activity, as some would call it. Kelly Reichardt exceptionally sets her narrative in the Oregon mountains as she expresses in an interview, “ The two things that are somewhat inherent in [a story about] going into the mountains alone with someone, especially if they’re going to a hot spring, are the loneliness and desertedness or whatever it is of being in the forest and then sexuality. They’re either going to kill each other or they’re going to fuck each other — one of those things is bound to happen”. Of course, the most memorable scene is when Kurt gives Mark a massage that could be viewed with a queer reading, yet the camera never shows anything homosexual and leaves room for ambiguity. This kind of ambiguous tone is an operation throughout the film notably with Kurt, and the ambiguity is speaking about the overall state of society’s uncertainty within the film.
ReplyDeleteDuring the drive to the hot springs, Kurt recalls on times passed. He gives the audience just enough detail for one to piece together his and Mark’s relationship, but one never fully knows Kurt or Mark’s background. Moreover, the ending scene with him wandering the streets is also very uncertain. Why isn’t Kurt at home, what is he doing, and where is he going? One may connect this to the radio talk show, as the radio host comments, “that’s why the government can’t say we are in a state of prosperity, but we are in the state of recovery” (something to that effect). This notion in the film is reflected with Kurt wandering the streets, as one receives the scene with the homeless man begging for money. Perhaps Kurt himself is in a state of economic recovery, just like the beggar.
This ambiguity or uncertainty resonates with Kurt and Mark’s relationship as well. It is with this trip that they might begin to be in a state of relationship recovery. Kurt greatly expresses that he feels something blocking him and Mark’s friendship. This indescribable void is the uncertainty of the economy, family, and during this scene, the uncertainty of direction. Both Kurt and Mark are affected by these things, and this trip away from the city disconnects them from the gravity that is pulling them towards uncertainty. Laying in that log tub at the hot springs generates a kind of buoyancy in their lives, for that moment, the uncertainty is gone, and a sense of life being clear and definite seems to exists, as Kurt tells Mark a story about his notebook and ends with his dreams telling him everything is okay.
Yet, one receives a notion of uncertainty never fully going away. The drive home was quiet, and as the two gets back into the city that void seems to manifest itself again, as Mark is reluctant to go back into his home and the camera changes to Kurt wandering the streets.
Also, if anyone is interested, the soundtrack to this film was absolutely beautiful. Kurt (Will Oldham) is also an amazing Musician!
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwnpUngi6Ok
I think it’s important to draw a connection between the “spaces” in all of the films we have watched thus far. First, we learned that Petzold likes to examine transitional spaces, which he states in the Cineaste review: “[The characters] consequently end up in transitional spaces, transit zones where nothingness looms on one side and the impossibility of returning to what existed in the past on the other. These are the spaces that interest me” (Abel 6). Secondly, we see this similarity in Olivier Assayas’ films, in which his characters move about in “non-places,” which are arguably the same types of spaces as Petzold’s transit zones. Kelly Reichardt also places Kurt and Mark in this type of transit/non-place in Old Joy, but in a slightly different type of way. It isn’t so much about the places they physically occupy, but rather the transitional state in their life in which they are living. In the interview with Kelly Reichardt we viewed today, she was asked about why her characters seem to always get lost, and she responded that, “Wherever I am, I always feel like I need to be someplace else [. . .] I have no sense of direction. I’m always lost somehow” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-koEJ_05YXw). With this statement, I infer that her characters take on this “lost” feeling during the films, and it is when they are lost that they occupy a transition place in their lives. Kurt and Mark literally become lost on their way to the hotsprings, but they figuratively were lost from one another as well. During their camping trip, they seem to bridge this gap between their friendship, and find their way out of the “lostness” and the non-place they’re in. Now, relating this all back to the idea of capitalism and desire, it is a little more difficult to see how capitalism plays a role in Old Joy since it isn’t as blatantly obvious as in films such as Yella and Demonlover. However, it is implied that Kurt and Mark were once close friends, perhaps with a “college buddy” type of friendship, with no cares in the world. However, Mark has moved on, and he has found a wife and is expecting a child - a typical image of the American family. Now, I know this isn’t exactly capitalism, but this “American family” is also very closely connected to the American dream of capitalism, and this is where I draw the connection between love and economy. The love examined in Old Joy is a friendly type of love between Kurt and Mark, which has been lost along the way. Kurt still seems to be in his “college buddy” type state, and the fact that Mark has moved on and matured causes some tension between them. However, this friendly love between them prevails, despite the fact that Mark has lost a little touch from what they used to know. Perhaps Mark believed that “one cannot love without money” at one time, which is why he has a wife and is expecting a child, and he presumably has a decent enough job to support his family. Eventually, as the film progresses, however, Mark realizes that his friendly love with Kurt never relied on money.
ReplyDeleteIn Kelly Riechardt's OLD JOY, we experience the nostaligia of friendship, life, and adulthood. The characters Mark and Kurt are two old friends with completely different lives. The two intend to reignite their friendship on a camping trip to a hot spring that is a coming-of-middle-age sort of film. In the interview we watched in class, Riechardt emphasized her love of the square and using space in her films in all sense of the word. OLD JOY shows the effects of space in life and film. The many shots from the car as the two men travel through the city to small towns on their way to the forest are very detailed and organic. The journey reminded me of my road trip to Colorado not that long ago, how it was beautiful in a very delicate sort of way. The camera really captures how small they feel, which is really the whole point of a camping trip - it reminds you of your childhood, maybe being a boyscout even, and now these grown men are out doing it again with such a more complicated view on their lives. Kurt really emphasizes the change that is going to happen to Mark's life as he's about to have a kid. "I've never had a mistake that I couldn't take back," he says, and acknowledges his bravery in becoming a father. Meanwhile, Kurt is a heavy marijuana user and it's clear that he's having trouble sorting out what he wants to do with his wife. I don't believe it was clear if Kurt had a family or girlfriend but I assumed that he was just kind of on his own which was affirmed in the end when Mark drops Kurt off at his home and Kurt really has no where to go or be, he wanders around the city looking for someone or somewhere but what?
ReplyDeleteI spent most of the film deciding where this movie was going to take me. It seemed kind of 'genre-less' or as I coined earlier 'coming-of-middle-age' but for a while I didn't know how crazy things were going to get. I thought for a while that KR was going to take the film to a sort of Blair Witch kind of way. When they get lost, Mark goes out to make a phone call and comes back to tell Kurt, "the sign up there is literally blank." Then Kurt has a sort of anxiety attack that really puts Mark, and the audience in an awkward position. Is he going to snap? Then they go out for breakfast and the waitress is also clueless as to where the springs is supposed to be and I wondered if it even existed at all but it was a very mellow and safe. I wish this film would've gave me something more to think about.
What I want to focus my blog post about is the ending. While watching the movie, I thought it was strange that we were shown Kurt wandering around the city. Also, why weren't we shown Mark? Did Riechardt's budget run out at that point? It just didn't feel finished to me right away.
ReplyDeleteBut after thinking about it some more, I made some sense of it.
During the entire movie we see this odd character, Kurt. As the plot progresses, Kurt becomes more at home the more the duo gets away from the city. And whether Kurt is gay doesn't really change the story or the meaning behind it. So, that shouldn't matter. I saw it as him becoming comfortable with himself and his friend. Or finding a sense of home.
When we see Kurt in the streets, he seems lost. Like just a wandering person with no sense of direction. Even when he interacts with the homeless person it was weird and awkward. This didn't look like a place that Kurt could find the peace that he did out in the woods and hot springs. That is why I think we were only shown Kurt at the end of the film.
Well, one answer to your first question may be that Mark has an already established life, which the film opened on. He has a wife, a home, a dog, amongst other things. Although his life is far from perfect, as his habitual listening to downtrodden, political radio could represent his own ideological struggle, his life is in relative order, as opposed to Kurt who we aren't allowed to see what his life is like. Some would assume that he's living a sort of bohemian lifestyle, as evidenced by his stories of traveling and recreational use of weed. However, I can't shake the feeling that these elements are used to make us assume things of Kurt, who is wholly unpredictable throughout the film. It's only fitting that his path should be unpredictable to the audience as well, as if to allow the audience to empathize with Mark through lack of information about Kurt. As the film ends, it may be assumed that this is Kurt and Mark's last meeting, a feeling that runs parallel with the audience's relationship with Kurt. The film ends, and we're left wondering what he's going to do after the trip. So, in a strange way I believe that the ending is actually more representative of Mark than Kurt, documenting Kurt's fading away from his life. Manhola Dargus' N.Y. Times review seems to come to the same conclusion that the two will never reunite as well, which seems probable.
DeleteThere is one thing I would disagree with you on. I believe that Kurt's sexuality does in fact change the story of the film. Perhaps not radically, but that in itself speaks to how each character feels about each other's sexuality. I think that Elle did a great post about this, so I won't try to repeat what she's said, but Kurt's sexuality and how forward he is changes some of the scenes in the film. Keep in mind, in the 9 years since the release of Old Joy, the public opinion of Homosexuality has changed drastically, and seeing as Reichardt is prone to making political statements in her films (see the use of political radio in Old Joy and the discussion on making a political film in the interview), we may be able to see that Kurt and Mark's relationship may be making a statement about homosexuality and the perception of masculinity in the mid 2000's.
Regardless, if Mark's attraction to women is genuine (and not to leave out the possibility of bisexuality), His emotional distance to Kurt changes context depending on Kurt's sexuality. Perhaps Kurt and Mark were in a relationship before the events of the film in their youth, and Mark broke off to be with his wife. Even if Kurt just wants to be friends with Mark on the trip, that changes that atmosphere radically. I guess in the end, it depends on how you view heterosexuality and homosexuality, but I think that if in 2015 members of the LGBTQ community are still struggling for recognition, than the LGBTQ climate in 2006 echoes through the performances of Mark and Kurt on Old Joy. That's my two cents in it. Regardless of whether or not Kurt is gay, I was touched by how honest and intimate their relationship was, which is almost never depicted in film.
I agree with a lot of what has been said regarding Kurt's sexuality but I would take the stance that it is not important to this story. I feel that this was more a coming-of-age film than a film with some sort of ambiguous homosexual message. I saw two friends who had drifted apart on completely different trajectories. This seemed to be unsettling for both of them but they manifested these feelings in different ways. Kurt coped with drugs and alcohol and living in the past while Mark was quite a bit more reserved. I felt Mark was calm on the surface because he was trying to be the man he felt he needed to be or was expected to be now that he was about to begin a family. However, he still didn't seem natural. Kurt couldn't live in the present and see the world around him for what it was, which is why he only spoke of the past or his future plans that he couldn't even say with true conviction. The final scene where Kurt is wandering around aimlessly confirmed my thoughts for me. Whether or not Kurt was a homosexual didn't change the message for me, but it does add another layer to the film and another topic for discussion.
DeleteThe end of the film confused me too, until I realized that Kurt, at least in some sense, is homeless. It is apparent from early in the film that Kurt is a disheveled wanderer, but only after looking at the film as a whole is the grim nature of his situation evident.
DeleteThe signs of Kurt's homelessness are first and foremost seen when he is introduced. Mark comes to pick him up at "an empty house" (Hall, 69) and is initially surprised to not find Kurt there. When Kurt does show up, the audience sees a man with a bushy beard and unremarkable, simple clothing. He is carrying a green cooler and hauling a wagon with a TV inside. This odd assortment of items did strike me as something that homeless individuals stereotypically carry, but I forgot that initial impression as the film went on.
Nevertheless, even in that very scene, the clues continued. When Kurt opens the back door of his van, the viewer sees that it is stuffed full of "clutter and collection" (Hall, 78). Kurt then suggests that they take Mark's vehicle since his does not do very well in the mountains. Later, in front of a nondescript building, Kurt asks Mark for ten dollars, presumably to buy cheap drugs.
As isolated incidents, none of these moments are significant, but together, they "spell out someone who is unreliable, opportunistic, confused, and lazy" (Hall, 69). First, I suggest that Kurt's van is full of stuff because that is the only place he has to store his belongings. He is, in essence, living out of his van while moving "in and out of" the lives of friends (Hall, 67). When the two first talk on the phone, Mark asks Kurt where he is staying. We do not hear a response, but given the fact that Kurt did not have ten dollars for drugs, it is likely he did not have enough money to stay anywhere, so if he could not find a friend to take him in, he slept in his van. Thus, he told Mark where to go to pick him up, but was intentionally late (Hall, 69) so that Mark would not see that he was not staying in the house, but his vehicle.
Second, as Kurt did not have ten dollars, he was not likely able to afford fuel for his van. So, I believe that his idea of taking Mark's station wagon was because his van could not handle the terrain as, but because he simply could not afford gas.
Of course, all these observations are strengthened cinematographic-ally by Kurt's final scene, when "the camera zooms in capturing Kurt wandering aimlessly, as if in a daze, unable to even decide what direction he should take" (Hall, 82). "Reichardt wants to remind viewers that Kurt is socially undesirable" and does so by filming him from a distance in this scene (Hall, 82).
As a homeless man (to some degree or other), Kurt epitomizes the uncertainty of modern life as described both by Zygmunt Bauman (Bauman, 2) and the talk radio hosts at the end of "Old Joy." " When you notice that housing costs, health care costs, and energy costs are exploding, you’re talking about things that make up the overwhelming share of the budget of an ordinary family. And so the combination of the uncertainty of the future and the pressure on the present create this move." Like those Bauman describes as having no "insurance against individual failure" (Bauman, 2), Kurt's life is uncertain, even down to where he will sleep at night.
I appreciate how you found a way to work with Bauman's text. Well done overall.
DeleteIn Kelly Reichardt's Reverse Shot interview, she states, "Hopefully a lot of what is coming through [in regards to the characters of Kurt and Mark] has to do with their body language, the way they put up a tent together or walk across a log and the spectator can read as much into that as in what they are saying." In this blog, I will provide one definition of both Kurt and Mark by analyzing one scene, which also happens to be mentioned by Reichardt in her interview: the sleeping bag folding scene.
ReplyDeleteMark and Kurt wake up after camping and sharing a tent for the night. They both remain completely silent, giving the scene an overarching feeling of tension. Mark is up and out of the tent first, followed shortly thereafter by Kurt who fiddles with his shoes for a while at the tent opening. Mark painstakingly rolls up his sleeping bag as to get it back in its bag. Kurt urinates off to the side, then, taking note of what Mark is doing, folds his sleeping bag haphazardly.
I cannot help but see this scene as that of a father and son camping together. Mark would here be the father figure, as he takes initiative in getting moving while Kurt seems more lackluster about getting on with the day. Mark plays into being a stereotypical adult, paying attention to the detail of rolling up his sleeping bag. Kurt, in comparison, sits tinkering with his shoes (a common thing young children do) and seems to imitate Mark by trying to fold his sleeping bag neatly.
As the viewer can infer throughout the film, Mark is nervous about entering fatherhood. This contributes to the tension of the sleeping bag scene- it's a subconscious reminder that his life as a singleton is shrinking rapidly and he has no power to control it.
This is further backed by the notion of Mark's phone call with his wife that takes place almost immediately after the scene I've just analyzed. By talking with his wife, asking her what she did last night, etc., Mark is reminded and comforted by the fact that he doesn't have to go fatherhood alone.
A nice, focused post, reading but one scene.
DeleteOf the reading I did to prepare for today's screening of "Old Joy," the quote from the Rodriguez-Ortega article about Reichardt's empty spaces in the film that a few of us have already cited dictated my viewing of the film. I wasn't so much trying to make up my own meaning the entire time- this does not interest me very much. Instead, I paid attention to how she created those opportunities.
ReplyDeleteThe minimalistic use of dialogue has already been discussed in great detail, both here and in the texts. I'd like to focus instead on how she shot the film (framing, angles, etc.), and how they contributed to a sense of emptiness into which the viewer and project their own meaning.
There was one shot in particular that immediately stood out to me and has been at the front of my mind since- when Mark was packing his car at home to leave. Only the trunk was in the shot, and barely so. Mark moved in and out of the shot until he pulls the car out of the shot, and then the camera continued to linger there for a few moments afterwards.
To me, how Reichardt decided to do this was largely affected by her decision to leave lots of room for personal interpretation. If anything, this particular example almost seemed to be this disposition taken to its logical extreme: it looked like she was reluctant to even film the characters of the movie. How much more room could you give someone to create their own meaning than barely providing a shot to interpret?
There were other good examples of filming techniques used to this end, but this was far and away my favorite. Speaking in more general terms, her frequent use of long shots (the example above being an example) and characterization of the forrest, both discussed in some of the reading for today, are good empty spaces on the screen that demand meaning be added to them because there is so little going on.
Overall, I enjoyed this film quite a bit and I'm excited to see more of Reichardt's work.
I noticed the space also, but more in terms of the forest as a character. In Old Joy, there were the two main characters, but I also noticed that with all of the cuts to the trees and birds that the forest also became a major character through the film. Of course, I knew that it was going to be before I had gone into this film because of the text, but the sheer amount of screen time the forest received was astonishing.
DeleteThe awkward moments between the two men would always involve a lot of cuts to the forest. For instance, when they finally reached the hot springs and Kurt starting giving Mark a massage the scene cuts straight to a few frames of the pools of water and birds around. I knew this had to be important because Reichardt repeatedly pointed out in her interview that she preferred long shots, and that she wasn’t even comfortable doing montage editing. “This is one of the central ideas of the film: they get lost in the forest and they become part of it and one with nature” (61).
The constant back and forth cuts between the two men talking and nature seemed to include the forest as a character that “had a voice” during the conversations. Not that the forest actually said anything, but the two male characters didn’t speak much either. It was that comfortable silence that communicates through glances and body language more than speech.
The forest was always the background, diegetic noise in the film. It constantly was going the entire time that the two men were there, but it never overpowered their conversations. Even in the hot spring scene, when the water was running, it was still softer than the men’s voices. This shows how the forest as a character was still disconnected from the men. It’s gives the feeling of isolation, and almost a feminine quality that reminds me of the male’s gaze in reverse.
Reichardt talked about the journals of the pioneers and the differences between the men’s and the women’s in her interview, and I couldn’t help notice that she used a lot of what she had said about the female’s diaries during the forest shots. The everyday tasks that even need to be done in the forest give weight to the idea of the “female forest.” I’m interested to see if any of you felt that the forest as a character gave the strong feeling of isolation and feministic qualities.
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ReplyDeleteIn her interview that we watched in class Reichardt talks about her use of the long shot. She talks about how she like likes the long shot because she likes to be able to watch the characters make their way through the screen and eventually leave the shot. She mentioned a certain beauty about it and I think this is what stood out to me the most out of what she said so I was already focusing on it when we started this movie. Focusing on it from the beginning, I was really able to see what she was talking about in her interview and I think it was used very powerfully in this film.
ReplyDeleteOne example of this was when Mark arrived at Kurts house the first time. We watch him enter the scene and then simply interact with it. It was an especially long take but I didn't really mind it as a viewer at all because it gave us the opportunity to experience the place that Kurt lives, and the type of person Kurt is (not being home but inviting someone to come over), before we actually get the chance to meet him and know more about him. Mark was able to make his way through the scene, out and in again, before it finally cut.
Another way this type of shot is effective in this film is simply in the environment it is shot in. Oregon is a very raw naturally beautiful state and Reichardt is able to capture it better with these long shots. She allows the audience to really take it all in without losing focus on the movie itself. An example of this is when Kurt and Mark are hiking. We are able to keep up with what the characters are doing while at the same time really experiencing the beauty of their surroundings. She uses the long shot so well throughout the film.
I like the idea that her characters take on this lost feeling during the films, especially in the end of the film when Mark drops off Kurt. As Kurt starts walking the streets I noticed that the camera is only focused on Kurt and the image behind Kurt is blurry, which makes the character seem lost in the city. Also, there are a lot of different camera angles and footage from a distance. At one point you feel like you’re in the actual forest as a bug is going down a tree. For a film that had two main characters and a dog this film was interesting to me. Starting with the beginning of the trip, when Mark is leaving and he is listening to the President talking about the role that democrats haven’t played. Then when he was leaving he turns it back on, even though he doesn’t seem interested in what is being said, you understand what era they were living in.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to her characters being lost, especially Kurt. When I watched this film, I was under the impression that not only was Kurt lost but he was lonely. It is interesting to point out that Kurt may be a homosexual because I didn’t see it that way when I watched the film. I just assumed that Kurt was perhaps jealous of what Mark had, especially after Kurt watches Mark outside of the restaurant while he is talking to his wife. Elle brings up a good point that the massage scene cuts off to them walking back to the car. Either way, whether Kurt is homosexual or lonely and jealous of what Mark has, I think that both of the characters are lost. Mark doesn’t seem too excited about his baby coming and it seems that Kurt doesn’t have an exact career path that he wants to take or doesn’t have any dreams as he was talking about his physics classes. They in fact do get lost during this trip but Mark doesn’t seemed too annoyed with Kurt, he kind of just goes with the flow, as he said to his wife on the phone “You know how Kurt is.” You can indicate that Kurt has been lost for a while but Mark has always been his friend. Overall, I enjoyed OLD JOY, especially since their budget was $300,000.
Old Joy (2006) begins with a shot of a small bird standing in a house gutter, followed by a close-up of Mark sitting in his yard fruitlessly trying to meditate. The sound of drumming is intertwined with the sound of traffic and birds chirping. As Jason briefly commented on his post about the importance of sound, I would like to expand on it—particularly as related to the quote by Kurt, “It’s not like there’s any big difference between the forest and the city though. You know what I mean? It’s all one huge thing now. There is trees in the city and garbage in the forest. What’s the big difference, you know?” and part of the introduction in “Filmmaker Magazine,” where it is observed that, “Kurt and Mark have left the city, but no matter how far they travel into the woods, the echo of their present lives, obligation and worries will find them.”
ReplyDeleteWith music used sparingly and silence playing a key role, the “echo” is carried through the film by the presence of birds and their song—present in tight, centered close-ups three times. Kurt’s observation about the tainting, the infiltration, and the merging of the urban with the natural, gives a sense of inescapability even when protected and emerged in nature. Once they’ve arrived at the hot springs, Mark and Kurt are lost inside the green space, and indeed, the birds singing, accompanied by dripping and running water, and the wind create a relaxed and mellow environment. A sequence of static, close-up shots of the falling water, accompanied by a long-take of Lucy pacing through the trees and the outhouse structure, further set the pace and create a sense of stability and isolation.
Even when Kurt rises from the water and goes to the benches, the sound continues uninterrupted and unaltered. The camera goes for another sequence of close-ups of nature pausing at a perched bird. The bird gets ready to set flight and when it is gone, the trembling branch is what the camera is focused on when Kurt’s voice infiltrates the natural world. The moment, like the bird, is gone with the introduction of mundane problems that Kurt proceeds to narrate. He is bringing in the echo of their lives into this safe space. In Rodriguez-Ortega’s piece, Reichardt mentions that key to the film was the idea that the characters, “get lost in the forest and they become part of it and one with nature. At the same time, they become a bit more vulnerable with each other, and then the forest just starts to take over.” While this is successfully achieved by the film up to this point, the separation of the two worlds, doesn’t survive the break of silence. In this sense, they are part of that world, as long as there is not engagement with outside problems. Kurt’s breakage of silence is an invitation for the echoes to come flying back. Like the third bird featured in Old Joy, the crow perched at the gas station on their way to the hot springs, the narration of their life is a watching presence that is embodied in the most isolated places, and whose notes one can’t escape.
Nicely observed
DeleteOne thing that was really evident in our first Kelly Reichardt film Old Joy is her use of long camera shots and attention to setting. Reichardt focuses on small or mundane task with her camera. Like watching Mark roll up a sleeping bag for 60 seconds. When a camera shot is left long by Reichardt, the scene effects an audience that is normally used to Hollywood quick-cuts and makes the audience feel as if they are lingering in a scene too long.
ReplyDeleteNYT Old Joy movie review had an interesting take on the film “There is a universal aspect to this story about memory and loss, and how we use the past to take refuge from the present. You can’t go home again; sometimes, you can’t even share a bowl of pot the way you once did. Yet if Mark and Kurt’s excursion resembles any number of classic adventures across time and space, the film is also insistently about this specific moment in time and space. Namely, an America in which progressive radio (actually, snippets from Air America) delivers the relentless grind of bad news that Mark can only listen to without comment and with a face locked in worry, a face on which Ms. Reichardt invites us to project the shell shock, despair and hopelessness of everyone else listening in across the country. (Dargis, 2006)
Tension added by the long shots had me waiting for a huge moment of conflict between Mark and Kurt, but it never came. There was conflict in the story, it was just shown subtly in the camera. For example. Kurt is jealous of Mark’s wedding ring, constantly ringing phone and recent success (or maybe his romantic interest in Mark as Emily’s post says above.) Mark however seems envious of Kurt’s freedom and carefree attitude.
The ending of the film is not climactic, but realistic. Not a lot of emotion is shown, and the two friends part ways and continue leading there separate lives. Mark joins his wife inside of his home and closes the door while Kurt wanders the streets for what looked like hours destination uncertain. Kurt giving the stranger change was a great gesture to show that Kurt is not someone who seems to care much for material possessions. I feel like the two are complete opposites as friend so they balance each other well.
The use of water in this movie was the biggest thing I noticed. Especially the scene when both Mark and Kurt are in the hot spring. The camera follows the water back up from the drips, to the tub, to the spring, and lastly to the river (from 1:01:37 - 1:02:00).
ReplyDeleteIn my head, she uses this image as a metaphor of time. While Mark and Kurt were old friends and had great times together in the past, they cannot reconnect. They've diverted into different streams. Water doesn't stop flowing just like time.
I think the pace of the movie allows you to think about what is going on more. Your mind bounces on a few ideas before she cuts to the next scene.
I thought the long lingering shots of the film reflected the plot line of the film. Both Mark and Kurt are happy to go on this trip and try to reconnect on some level. It seems that when the connection doesn't come back they are forced to linger in the past much like the camera.
Kurt says, “Sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy” and Old Joy basis itself around this statement. There is a sense of sorrow from Mark at the very beginning. He and his wife have normal spats as any relationship, but the difference is that there is a baby on the way. That in it can cause problems, being scared, and sorrow for the life he’ll never have. Meeting up with Kurt seems like the failure or success of being happy or sad the rest of his life. Gus Van Sant mentions that decay is present throughout Reichardt’s films and proves that by using the decay of Mark and Kurt’s friendship. This is prominent throughout their trip and slowly, but surely proves to Mark that the sorrow or sadness isn’t going away.
ReplyDeleteSpecific points that show this are the moment of silence at the bonfire and in the Hot Spring when Kurt is telling a story that turns into a dream, but you can tell Mark isn’t even listening. Mark is caught up in the sorrow or being worn-out. The New York Times review said that there was this “lingering sense of regret that hangs over the men with one pristinely framed image after another.” Kurt seems to be involved in the conversation and trying to make an effort in the friendship. Mark on the other hand seems to have different things on his mind other than the time with his friend and his dog. He shows no change or effort to make a difference in his friendship or his life for that matter. The ending only affirms that he hasn’t change. Immediately after dropping Kurt off, the radio goes back on and says nothing other than something about “the uncertainty about the future.” Mark hasn’t been enlightened by the trip, he is still listening to the same talk show and has that same dull look in his eyes.
Kurt is alive though, he is taking a new light to things and the Hot Spring gave him a new outlook on life. It may have ended his relationship with Mark, but it seems as though his “joy” was rejuvenated. Reichardt ends the film with Kurt’s eyes looking out and up, giving a sense of hope that maybe that experience helped at least one of them out.
Old Joy starts with sorrow end with sorrow and a little bit of hope.
I agree that the 'worn-out joy' statement made in the movie encapsulated the message of this film. Although you have a much more optimistic outlook for Kurt than I do after watching the film. It seemed to me that he was just as lost, if not more so, in the final scene as he was when we met him. Kurt could tell that he was drifting away from Mark but never did anything more than contemplate their past relationship. He never offered a resolve and in the final scene I saw him doing nothing more than wondering around aimlessly. The film ends with him standing next to a homeless man. If I look at that scene without watching the rest of the movie I would see nothing other than 2 homeless men on a street corner, and that was the lasting impression I got of him. I'm fascinated by your interpretation of that scene. I was caught up in him walking past the homeless man then spinning in a circle and awkwardly returning to him to give him change that I didn't notice the film ended with Kurt looking out and up as you put it. Interesting take.
DeleteAmong all the films that we’ve watched, Old Joy was by far the toughest film to analyze. This could be part of Kelly Reichardt’s style of film making. During the interview, Reichardt stated that she tends to emphasize more on the process of things and Old Joy clearly portrays that. The whole movie shows the process of nature, escape and change.
ReplyDeleteThe friendship between Kurt and Mark was definitely unique. Unlike the films by Petzold and Assayas, Reichardt emphasized more on the characters. The viewers are given more insights and backstory about them. From there, we know that Kurt and Mark has been friends for a long time, most probably since high school or college. However, as years go by, change was inevitable. Mark grew and became more mature. He was successful (as Kurt seems to always praise his work) and is about to become a dad. Kurt, on the other hand, still has trouble making a living. He doesn’t have confidence in himself. This shows that they both live in totally different worlds and Kurt notices that. Another emphasis on change was through the process of Mark accepting the fact that he’s about to become a father. Since the start, I notice that he yearns for an escape and peace. He constantly go on camping trips out in the forest where it is quite. I feel like he’s trying to escape his responsibilities as a husband and father. Nonetheless, at the end, he seems more accepting about his life. I noticed that there were 3 types of birds that Reichardt took shots of. There was a small-looking bird at the start, then a crow followed by another black bird. The birds could indirectly symbolizes Mark and his growth.
Change was also shown through Reichardt’s cinematic qualities. There were a lot of long-take shots on the surroundings. First, we get the view of the city followed by a farm and then, the forest. I guess this indirectly shows the process of their roadtrip and also the change of civilization. “Also, throughout the film, as in River of Grass, an environmental subtext is subtle but clear; she juxtaposes images of nature against civilization and technology, hinting at the damage done to natural resources while reveling in the beauty of the Oregon forest” (Focus 65). I noticed that the campsite where Kurt and Mark stayed the night at was filled with trash, polluted and deserted. We only see that in the morning. During the night, it looks like any normal campsite. I find this interesting because it gives an awareness on what has become of the environment and nature’s natural resources, just as stated in the passage above.
Moreover, going back to what we discussed in class last week about how movies tend to showcase a problem and solution. Well, in this movie, everything seems very vague but the viewer’s know that there is a problem. There is a problem with their friendship and Mark’s life. Nonetheless, at the end, they seem to have a sense of self-discovery and closure but the solution was not emphasized. Maybe from there, Reichardt is trying to make room for the viewer’s to interpret?
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ReplyDeleteThis film was such a wonderful breath of fresh air after all of the fast, loud, and angry films we watched last week. Out of everything we’ve seen in this class, I think that this one felt the most realistic to me, with Clean being the only other main contender. Everything in this film was just so much more relaxed and simple, it was really great to sit back and enjoy the peaceful scenery and low-key character development. Old Joy wasn’t trying to do or prove anything about itself, it just existed, there for us to soak in and enjoy. It communicated its feelings and messages clearly, concisely, and without any extra gimmicks or flair. Not every film can achieve that, and not every film should, but I think Old Joy pulled it off perfectly.
ReplyDeleteThis entire movie seemed strangely familiar. Not that I’ve seen other films like it, but that the locations, the events, the characters, everything about it reminded me of things I’ve seen and experienced in real life before. I got a huge wave of nostalgia for the cross-country road trips I used to take with my family when I was younger, and I even texted my mom after class and asked her if she and I could go on a mother-daughter road trip up to the Rockies at the end of the summer. That’s how much this movie spoke to me - it made me long for things I once knew and experienced, which I think interestingly paralleled what was going on with Kurt and Mark. Judging by the comfort of their shared silences, it’s pretty easy to tell that they’ve been friends for a long time (the dialogue suggests since at least high school). They wanted, for a short period of time, to get back to that, to re-experience each other’s company and friendship like they did when they were younger. Of course, there was a little bit of an awkward air that suggested things weren’t exactly like they were before, but it didn’t seem like too big of a deal to them or to me. It was just the way things were. And really, that’s okay.
What’s great about the writing and direction of this film is that we’re never given any explicit backstory or expository monologues about who they are - everything about their personalities and places in life is shown through their actions and interactions. I think the juxtaposition of their situations was also pretty interesting. Mark is settling down, starting a family. Kurt is wandering, lost, searching for and finding happiness in many different places. This film isn’t about them finding their solutions, but instead offers a brief, beautiful glimpse of them just mulling these things over together out in the woods, finding a brief moment of serenity before heading back to their normal routines a little more clear headed than they were before.
I think a lot of very interesting observations have been made about this film by other classmates, including Kurt potentially being homosexual, whether or not that matters, how the distance between the two friends is summated by the title, and how the cinematography reinforces the feelings of nostalgia.
I thoroughly enjoyed Old Joy. It just felt good to watch. Much like a trip away from the city and into the forest, less isn’t always more - sometimes, less is just the right amount.
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ReplyDeleteI want to focus on KR's camera work and more specifically framing. During her interview we watched in class she spoke of how she prefers the 4:3 ratio to more mainstream aspect ratios because it allows her to show more sky and foreground. After I heard her speak on this I made a note to watch for examples throughout Old Joy. I found that she meticulously and beautifully framed nearly every scene from beginning to end and let the actors and scenery do the work. From the early scenes of Mark and his wife in their backyard to the shots of the camera steadily filming the treeline as it passed overhead while Mark and Kurt drove through the woods, the camera seemed to always be at rest while everything in the frame was telling the story. I found this to be a refreshingly organic change of pace from the relentlessly active camera work of Assayass' films we watched last week. KR shows that you don't have to have a big budget to create something beautiful.
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear, however: KR's reference to a 4:3 frame refers to Meek's Cut-off. Her other films are not shot in this aspect ratio. But your observations regarding her framing in OJ are on target.
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