FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Kelly Reichardt - Old Joy 

Mark and Kurt are old friends who meet for a weekend camping trip. Time enough to find out how much has changed in their lives over the years. It's pretty rainy. A fat snail glides over a boulder that lies picturesquely covered with green moss. An image that, for my sake, doesn't have that much to do with the story of these two friends, but fits right in! It just fits the trip of the two, who are on their way to a hot spring in Oregon. Kelly Reichardt obviously understands this. She introduces sustained images and sounds, leaving plenty of space and time. At one point, a bird chirps on the gutter. The film lingers. So do we. And the story? Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham) get lost in the mountains on their way to the spring. They set up camp in a place filled with furniture that must have been dumped. There they spend their evening, drinking beer and shooting at cans. The next day, they find the spring, wallow in it a bit, and head out for the return trip to Portland. If you've ever been camping for a weekend, you know that two days seems like half an eternity. Just by moving around. Not much happens at all! But you can observe endless little things. Short impressions. Like in Old Joy. For example a snail crawling over a rock. Some customers of our video store might complain that it's all very slow. Slow cinema, as they say. But I mean: there is unspoken tension here, even discomfort, feelings of sadness, even horror. But all this takes place between the lines. The all-important moment: then, when the path branches off to the source.... Old Joy is a film that keeps its secrets. The secrets of the mind and the heart. They don't have to be revealed superficially. You can feel them and understand them. Obviously, Kurt longs for his past with Mark. Mark hears Air America - which somehow connects him to his former ideals. But today he seems frustrated. Almost numb. They live in a Blue State - and Mark dreams of a third party. Kurt must think he's a spiritual person. But maybe he just smokes too much dope. He lost contact with his old friends at some point. In the funniest scene of the film, he puts on a pair of plum-colored shorts - like a new age hippie of the early 80s. All the while, Kurt talks about enlightening journeys. But at a certain point, we realize that Kurt and Mark must have had all these conversations umpteen times before. Kurt is a loser. The kind of guy who, at forty, is still crashing on his friends' couch. He's disturbed that he's obviously not capable of leading an adult life. What does he want from Mark? Does he just want to turn back time? Is there even some sexual tension? Such questions move me long after Old Joy is over and make Reichardt's film an unflinching work!