From almost its first screen debut in early 2006, Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy" was hailed as a new milestone in American cinema, even a belated indie filmmaking mature work. Beneath the deceptively simple story of two old friends in their thirties reunited over a one-night mountain trip, the film covers a vast territory in a limited 73 minutes—not only provides insight into the two The meticulously detailed character study of men approaching middle age also presents a sympathetic dissection of contemporary masculinity, a portrait of coastal liberal-laden Impressionism, and an affordable example of storytelling.
After its Sundance premiere, the film was flooded with rave reviews (for example, Amy Taubin argued that "just by its very existence . not yet gone"), although it was discordantly tucked into the secondary experimental works unit, alongside Kevin Jerome Everson and Sharon Lockhart, among others Visual artist's non-fiction works are housed together. Critics have found it to be a well-crafted fictional story based on an all-too-real life that presents us with the world we live in in a way that runs counter to the raucous gist of most modern media. In contrast to the light comedy that has become the norm at Sundance, Reichardt's storytelling is cryptic, thoughtful and nuanced, with a deep-rooted confidence and probing, a sign of the tumult of the twenty-first century—and perhaps even more. There is a staunch resistance of despair.
Critic J. Hoberman praised Yesterday as a "decaying Easy Rider" (1969), and this set of comparisons deserves closer consideration. Dennis Hopper's celebration of boomer exceptionalism follows a pair on a wild roaming journey through the 'America's Age of Aquarius' in custom Harleys : Aquarian-age USA is related to the American hippie culture in the 1960s and 1970s and the New Age movement, emphasizing the innovative values of harmony, understanding, empathy, and celebrating life) The protagonist; the weekend warriors of "Happy Yesterday" , drove a battered Volvo station wagon from Portland, Oregon, to the nearby mountains.
"Easy Rider" riders juggle free-sex sweethearts, take drugs, and get chased by angry rednecks; Reichardt's post-masculine fraternity doesn't need to intervene with sex and violence to show the connection between its male characters intimate. She helps us understand the complexities of their relationship with subtlety: capturing fleeting glances and silent responses, highlighting each man's heightened response to his partner's emotions, and navigating the delicate psychological balance that long-standing friendships bring. Reichardt likes to call her films "Westerns of the era," and she subverts most of the American genre by making it a deeply inner journey.
The spiritual pursuit of "Yesterday's Joy" is manifested in the appearance of the Buddhist bell that reverberates above the title of the opening film. Mark (played by the quiet Daniel London) is first introduced to the audience, a slender, long-haired, casually dressed man who sits cross-legged in his backyard, trying to immerse himself in meditative bliss— — but judging by his fidgety posture, it didn’t work out. Before we see Kurt, we first hear his voice - Mark's pregnant wife Tania (Tanya Smith), as she walks around their tidy home, playing the Mark's answering machine left a message.
The couple had a brief spat over Mark's participation in Kurt's weekend excursion to the hot springs, and their heated altercation was punctuated by some passive confrontational pauses. In these few quick strokes, Reichardt portrays Mark as a sincere, sensitive person who has achieved all of his goals as a decent heterosexual adult—owning a house, marriage, and children—but Now he is still struggling against the constraints of family life. Another layer of the agony of home life is revealed through the few liberal conversations Mark listened to in his Volvo on the way to meet Kurt, the masculine voice on the radio spewing powerless anger at the country's turn to conservatives.
The two agreed to meet at the residence of their mutual friend where Kurt lived temporarily, but Kurt arrived late. With coolers on his shoulders and oddly towing a red Radio Flyer trailer loaded with an old-fashioned little TV, he looks like an out-of-the-ordinary kid swimming out of an orphanage, or a seasoned vacationer waiting at the dock for a ferry. Played by indie musician Will Oldham, he has an infectious affinity, with a bald head, outdated attire, a nascent middle-aged figure, and a wild apricot beard. Mark him as a typical hippie urchin. The two don't seem to have seen each other in a while, but Kurt enters a strangely intimate context almost immediately. "You know I had a dream about you that night? You seemed to be in, like, a hospital," he told Mark as he prepared for their trip. "That dream was really weird, but you were the best part about it so far."
The story of Happy Yesterday was first published as a stand-alone book in 2004 with photography by Justine Kurland. With Raymond's participation, Reichardt turned the minimalist story into an equally minimalist film, translating the roughly 6,500-word tale into a feature-length film that spans just 50 pages. script. The film is closely tied to Raymond's writing, with much of the action and dialogue drawn directly from the storyline. Mark's wife, and the couple's dog, Lucy, who accompanies Mark and Kurt on their subsequent hikes, were created especially for the film. Tania only appears at the beginning of the film, but the cell phone calls Mark receives on her overnight trip retain an invisible presence, a lingering connection to his responsible life. Reichardt's own dog of the same name effortlessly plays Lucy, the silent third companion on the journey. As they made their way through the woodland, she trotted around, galloping toward her own adventure. She is indifferent to the cultural-to-nature transition, blissfully unaware of the subtle existential struggle between her two human friends.
As soon as the two travelers entered the mountains, the verdant scenery of the northwest threw onto the screen, and its rich texture was captured calmly with a Super 16mm camera by photographer Peter Sillen, who was previously known for his documentary work. Portland's urban environment is barely portrayed—Reichardt presents its more post-industrial fringe—but as Mark and Kurt drive towards the mountains, smoking Kurt's rolled cigarette, they The conversation touched on the economic transformation the city has gone through. Cottey might want to sell some old records at a place called Sid's when he gets back to town, but Mark warns him. "Sid's gone, man. The rent must be too expensive," he told Kurt. "Now that's a milkshake shop, Rejuicenation, and Sid sells on eBay instead." Kurt seemed surprised by the information. "No more Sid's," he said, glancing out the window before pulling back the leaf. "End of an era." greeted the ensuing silence with this bittersweet original by the band Yo La Tengo. Under the cloud-covered sky, the sound of guitars accompanies the mountain scenery.
Kurt's return to Portland after a long absence mirrors Reichardt's own experience as a director. Her first feature, River of Grass (1994), shot in Florida, won awards and critical acclaim. Happy Yesterday, her second feature film project, was completed 12 years later. During this period, when a much-vaunted American indie craze focused on domineering young male directors, Reichardt was running around New York trying to start a feature-length project, going to the movies, using VCRs with Super 8 cameras Made several short films and also did various non-film related work. Her friend Todd Haynes moved to Portland in the late nineties, and Reichardt began spending more time in the Northwest, where she developed the idea for an adaptation of Raymond's story. In Happy Yesterday, Reichardt continued the same austere production model that these small film projects allowed her to practice, using only a team of six to complete the feature in 10 days. "I've been imagining [the Rolling Stones' 1972 album] Exile on Main St., a small group of people going into a beautiful setting, hiding, and everyone focusing on this one project", Reichardt wrote in the director's elaboration for the film's release. "I think the intimate way we made this film is reflected in the film itself. The challenge of this kind of filmmaking is to turn all the constraints into something that works in your favor, adding to the fragility of the story itself."
After the word-of-mouth success of Happy Yesterday, Reichardt completely made up for her lost time, completing five more new films between 2008 and 2019. Four of them were filmed in Oregon: Wendy and Lucy (2008), another road-free road movie; Meek's Cutoff, a non-romantic western. 2010); a sluggish eco-thriller, Night Moves (2013); and First Cow (2019), set in the early nineteenth century among settlers of the Pacific Northwest. middle. Although filmed in Montana, her Certain Women (2016), like other films, shares a sympathy for those who are wandering, living in hardships, disoriented and unlocated in literal and metaphorical journeys. interest in the role of the road.
In Happy Yesterday, Mark and Kurt get lost even during their brief journey. Struggling with paper maps and Kurt's shaky memories and unable to find the actual campsite, they decide to spend the night in a makeshift replacement. It was littered with trash thrown by other travelers, including an old-fashioned dorm sofa. There, they made fires, drank beer, shot with air guns, and got caught up in a philosophical battle of drug addicts. As night fell, Kurt's metaphysical rants became more and more erratic; he explained how he resisted a community college physics class because he completely believed in a teardrop-shaped universe model he had proposed. Reichardt recounts that, in response to Kurt's theory, Mark squinted slightly in the firelight as he stared at Kurt, apparently skeptical of his friend's journey to thirty, believing that Inspired a slightly darker psychological instability. But neither man has any idea what the future holds. When Kurt asked Mark if he was looking forward to being a father, he gave a vague answer. "We're all stuck at work, the problem is almost unimaginable, but it has to find its way out," he said. "We'll find another rhythm. Do what others do."
The indirect political dimension of Happy Yesterday achieves a more direct effect in a scene like this. Mark and Kurt have chosen very different paths, but neither of their lives have seen the comfort or happiness they might have expected. For Reichardt, this sense of unease and frustration was inspired by the gloomy realities of American domination in the twenty-first century: She was drawn to Raymond's story, she said, because it "captured (the Bush era). ) all the sense of loss and alienation that everyone in my world is trying to combat”, which saw the re-election of a militant president after the world’s largest series of anti-war protests. “The relationship between Mark and Kurt is, among other things, an excellent metaphor for the futility of left-wing self-gratification.” If the pristine wilderness of the West ever allowed people to stake their hopes on its uncultivated lands Above, then now, the wild forest is full of garbage.
Yet in the oppressive moments they spent together, there was also a glimmer of redemption. Their rapport is reminiscent of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on friendship, in which he insight "Only by being alone and with each other can two persons enter into simplicity Relationship". (Elsewhere in the same article, Emerson offers some wisdom related to Reichardt's entire project for the film. "We have more goodness than we speak," declared the wilderness-loving wise man." Read the language of these wandering eyes. The mind will know.") This healing peace culminates when the two finally find the hot spring they've been looking for. In this country spa, they stripped off their clothes and returned to Edenic nakedness, immersing themselves in the warm spring water, which dripped on wood and stone. At one point, Kurt came over and started massaging Mark's shoulders. Although resisted at first, Mark eventually succumbed to his grip, as we can see in the shot of his wedding ring-wearing hand slowly loosening.
Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" hit theaters only a few weeks before Reichardt's film opened at Sundance, leading to widespread speculation about the massage scene when "Yesterday" was new : Dennis Lim, covering Reichardt's directorial return for The New York Times, states that "Brokeback Mountain" "adds a timeless subtext to the concept of two men going on a camping trip" as his article Begin. Reichardt said that Happy Yesterday gave her an opportunity to explore softer expressions of masculinity in contemporary Northwestern American men; she was more ambiguous about whether she meant to imply homosexuality, though she conceded, The film (which, if not so, would find meaning in its omissions) allows for such a reading. Ultimately, it doesn't seem to matter whether Mark and Kurt's weekend turns sexually at all, as the psychological intimacy they share with each other is as naked as they can be, acting out their own unspoken love.
The ending of Happy Yesterday was as disturbing as it began. As Mark drove home, the left-wing slurs rang out again on the radio in the car. Kurt may be nearly penniless, wandering around downtown Portland, brushing past some of the older wanderers who might herald his fate. Yet despite its depressing ending, Happy Yesterday retains some optimism, believing that the peaceful journey that Reichardt has just taken us through can take its own form in the face of the oppressions of everyday life. , giving us some moments of respite, and the courage to resist.
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