It's Firday night and the entire family is gone to watch the local high school football game. I stayed behind to watch an 'art film', Old Joy - I haven't decided yet whether or ot to recommend it in a general way. (I would recommend it to a very particular audience.) But it has me thinking...
The most thought-provoking concept in the film for me was the statement: 'Sorrow is just warn-out joy.' If that is true, and I would say that in many cases it is, then it makes sorrow more bearable and even a bit beautiful. Maybe human beings can learn to see through sorrow to the joy that makes sorrow more exquisite.
The film is about old friends, both male, who have moved on with their lives but get back together for an overnight camping trip to a place called Bagby Hot Springs in Oregon. They seem to have little in common, except that they were roommates at one time in the past. The man who appears to have his life in order, with a job, a wife, and a baby on the way, is riddled with internalized questions, while the Rip-Van-Winkle, 21st century hippie beleves he understands everything at a metaphysical level. (He may understand reality, but he avoids it at the same time, using drugs and alcohol in virtually every scene.)
The movie poses the following questions: What is friendship? Why do we care about old friends who really have little place in our current lives? Can two people of the same gender touch without sexual meaning? Why is nature therapeutic, even healing?
I only stopped watching the movie an hour ago, and already it is growing on me. It's the kind of movie that feels like real time, like actual experience. I think that I would recommend it to people who like art films or people who are trying to figure out the nature of friendship and its role in our lives.
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