Dark hearted singer Will Oldham is currently starring in a new movie which has just been released in the US to rave reviews. It’s called Old Joy and Oldham, an old ham himself (gettit?) having played a young preacher in John Sayle’s 1987 movie Matewan and more recently in the odd-things-happen-when-you-meet-the-inlaws classic Junebug, plays Kurt, one of two friends who head out on the road one last time before his travelling companion Mark (Daniel London) becomes a father.
The New York Times reviews the film today, saying that it’s the finest American film so far this year, and considering that most of the films released on the run up to Christmas rarely become instant classics of the cinema its fair to say that they’re implying that its the finest of the year.
Critics elsewhere are also frothing with praise and it’s already garnered a ‘Tiger’ Award from the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Its kind of a road movie in that they drive part of the way before hiking into a forest, get lost and finally find what they are looking for, a natural hot spring, as well as, if you’re to believe the NYT film reviewer ‘something that had gone lost, namely a sense of the other’.
The film, directed by Kelly Reichardt is based on a short story by Jonathan Raymond, who co-wrote the screenplay with Reichardt and much like other brainy US indie movies such as The Squid and the Whale the title points to a metaphor that underpins the theme of the movie.
Waxing lyrical, the NYT says: “At one point during their travels, Kurt tells Mark a meandering story that begins with a trip to a store to buy a notebook and ends with a scene from a dream. In his dream a woman gives Kurt a hug and tells him that “sorrow is nothing but worn-out joy.”
The sorrow in question seems to come from Mark, who has the worries of the world on him, even though he’s on the cusp of taking on more responsibilities. But his anxieties, it seems are a reflection of America’s anxieties at the present time.
This is 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”.
The Will Oldham character Kurt seems to be quite like the characters that Oldham portrays in his songs, namely men who lust for life and take what they can and look for no rhyme or reason in it. The film ends with the image of Kurt ‘out in the streets and alive to the world’, while his friend without any comment about when they would meet up again drives off with the radio news blaring.
Added bonus is that Yo La Tengo do the sound track.
Here's the trailer
Here's some Will on YouTube
And a great video from the Palace Brothers 'Come in'
