HOBART: Old Joy

A week ago, I got the movie Old Joy out of the library. And I watched it.

And I really liked it.

You, reader, should also go get it out of: a library, a video store, a friend's DVD collection. Wherever.

It's based on a short story by Jon Raymond, and author I don't know very well beyond reputation.

In this review, Roger Ebert quite accurately says that the movie "feels" like a short story, in that it favors compression, and apt, brief strokes to render its character-building and story-building.

Will Oldham is in it. He's Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Following this link will give you a list of Oldham music videos
you can watch. Watch "Cursed Sleep."

Raymond wrote the story in response to photographs by Justine Kurland. Someone on Wikipedia says her work focuses on the: "secret places of late childhood; wasteland on the edges of suburbia, 'owned' only by a feral nature and unsupervised children."

The film does, too, but the characters are in their 30s. One is a drifter, a pot-smoker, a bit of a hippie—in a not unpleasant way. The other has a family on the way, is married, has a home, listens to liberal talk radio.

They go out to a hot spring together, hike and talk. For 70 minutes.

And, seriously, I really liked it.

I lived near some of those wasteland edges of suburbia. I remember those hikes out by the railroad tracks. I remember the pig iron pellets and the pot pipes and the stolen cans of beer.

There's a scene I really liked. The two friends make it to the hot spring. They get naked. They bathe. At one point, Oldham (the rootless friend) massages the other's shoulders.

Some might watch it and pick up a homo-erotic subtext. But it ain't there. I didn't think so, anyway.

I just thought it was that thing that boys, previous to being taught they should be ashamed of touching their male friends, do. The older boys make the shame of being gay happen to young boys eventually. But, in the feral, unsupervised places, it happens. The rooted friend is uncomfortable at first. But the rootless friends intentions are without subtext.

So, yeah. Go get it.

--matthew