Two long-time friends (Daniel London and singer Will Oldham) reassess their bond on a mountain camping trip. A quiet, shimmering elegy to lost friendship from director Kelly Reichardt.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2007
Old Joy 2006
"One man (Daniel London) faces impending fatherhood, the other (Will Oldham) still clings to a notion of carefree, unencumbered drift. And what begins for these two longtime pals as a weekend mountain camping trip becomes in… Kelly Reichardt’s shimmering, quiet treasure of a film, an elegy to mutable friendship, enduring nature, and the sense of loss that inevitably accompanies the adult pull to move forward.” — Liza Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly.
“Working with cinematographer Peter Sillen, [Reichardt] offers up a world of enchantments that, along with Kurt’s fumbling confessions of friendship, create a counter-narrative to despair. Garbage mars the woods, but here too there are canopies of soaring trees and a luxuriously unhurried slug. The deeper the men walk into the forest, accompanied only by Mark’s dog, the more they recede into the surrounding green, until they become part of the larger picture, not its centerpiece… A triumph of modesty and of seriousness that also happens to be one of the finest American films of the year.” — Manohla Dargis, NY Times