Bush’s America has never vegetated so much green in Old Joy, a spiritual roadtrip of two old yet fading friends en route to a hot springs concealed somewhere deep in the foothills of Oregon’s majestic Cascade mountain ranges. With not a duelling banjo in sight, the mates – one, a full bearded salt-of-the-earth clinging to the leftist ideal, the other a father-to-be who’s abandoned his activist youth for the pragmatism of family life – get reacquainted on a weekend camping excursion of lost trails, roadside diners, campfire confessions, and ecological tranquillity as their pilgrimage into a seemingly uncharted emerald forest of fern leaves and shimmering creeks might as well have been cribbed straight from the New Zealand’s Middle Earth.

What’s most startling about the film though is how its sympathy for the American landscape frames an otherwise prevailing discord, where politically-at-odds radio callers drone the airwaves, and fissures in the national psyche come inexplicitly close between two friends. Director Kelly Reichardt describes this mood as a “metaphor for the self-satisfied, ineffectualness of the left”, and Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt’s (Will Oldham) escape into the wilderness to heal and take stock is quietly unsettled by an Antonioni-esque sense of estrangement. Reichardt however forgoes cold urbanism for an enlightening naturalism, and if Mark and Kurt’s alienation is apparent, it’s also partly self-imposed. An antithesis to Deliverance, these are un-macho men who seek to bond with their environment as much as themselves, and Reichardt turns their solitude into a leisurely meditation recalling Ceylan, Malick, Blissfully Yours... even the austere cross-country introspect of Two-Lane Blacktop. In Oldham and London, we also get a down-to-earth authenticity reminiscent of last year’s non-acting triumph Bubble. Like that film, Old Joy is economical, gloriously sparse, and ever so closely observed.

Across another divided state, Jesus Camp also tunes into the talkback voice of a fractured nation. At the far right of this chasm is an extreme branch of Evangelical Christians, whose politically oriented strategy involves indoctrinating – or should that be brainwashing – their children and future leaders with the irrational tools of God. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with instilling confidence and faith at a young age, and many of the kids – as you’d expect from a summer camp – come away with a sense of purpose and empowerment that is otherwise sorely lacking in today’s apathetic generation. But when the camp’s hostess, Pentecostal minister Becky Fisher, compares her recruitment drive to an opposing and equally fanatical religious concern – Islam’s under-aged martyrs and soldiers – the documentary becomes increasingly disturbed. While this isn’t without moments of absurdist humour – namely, the worshipping George W. Bush, God’s 2IC who graces the camp in spirit as a cardboard cutout – it remains a candidate for the most terrifying film of the year. The children, however, cannot be labeled helpless victims in all of this: impressionable as they may be, some are clearly strong-minded enough to one day gain back their personal autonomy. As for the kid who admits to his peers that he still watches Harry Potter movies despite the boy wizard’s blacklisting as the devil? He’s already halfway there.—Tim Wong

See also:
» Darkness, then Light: Old Joy (Reviewed by Melody Nixon)