'Old Joy' a poignant look at friends grown apart

"Old Joy" sees much of Oregon the way we do most of the time: through a car window, sliding by on the highway.

This quiet, melancholy road movie - some of which was shot off the McKenzie Highway west of Sisters- screens Friday night, October 6, at Sisters Movie House.

It follows the journey of two old friends into the forests in search of a special hot spring - and for the connection that once bound them.

While most of the film is set in the lush green forests, a key shot is a long one of the St. John's bridge over the Willamette River. Already, early in the film, we can recognize the bridge as a symbol for the whole trip, for the effort to span a silent gap between two men.

For Mark (Daniel London), the road trip is a chance to get out of Portland for some time in the woods, just ahead of his impending fatherhood. Mark does not feel free; he wants the approval of the mother of his child for this one last adventure.

Kurt (Will Oldham), who rolled into town and proposed the trip, has no real roots. He is a wanderer, a seeker. The two share a history that is revealed in snippets, a past but not a present.

They are fundamentally strangers to each other.

Kurt keeps the pot pipe stoked as he regales Mark with tales of his wanderings and his theories of physics, while Mark checks the speedometer on his Volvo and makes patient U-turns as Kurt tries to remember the site of the fabled hot spring where there's no one around and it's quiet and you can really think.

Director Kelly Reichardt said she first read the short story by John Raymond "like a New Age Western" with a simmering edge of competition between the two men.

That competition is certainly there - who is more "open"; who is giving back to the community?

There are moments of real connection - at a gas station where they playfully toss can coolers at each other; when they finally reach the hot spring. But each moment of connection is fated to fade.

"It's so intangible," said Reichardt. "It hits a moment then it falls apart, hits a moment and falls apart."

The film's quiet realism leaves the viewer recognizing himself. Who has not grown apart from a friend that seemed as close as a brother?

Some people change and move on; others don't. Both gain and both sacrifice by the road they choose (or by the road that chooses them).

The beauty of the forest softens the tension and lends a sense of the permanence of the broader world as people drift through it, uncertain and seeking a connection.