Beyond the Multiplex

Fast forward: Reliving a lost corner of the '80s in "American Hardcore"; the riches of a decaying friendship in "Old Joy"
Now for two movies that, in a more just and righteous world, would each get its own spotlight. Paul Rachman's cultural-history doc "American Hardcore" unearths an astonishing trove of material from the all-but-forgotten American punk scene of the early '80s. It's not forgotten if you were there, of course, and speaking as someone who was on the outermost fringes of this world (I was into artier and poppier bands, more Sonic Youth than Black Flag) I'm profoundly grateful for this film.

Rachman and writer Steven Blush, who authored the 2001 book that inspired the film, are here to remind us that there really was a zone of cultural-political resistance amid the seeming prosperous conformity of the early Reagan years. As one former hardcore practitioner proclaims, he and his friends were there to announce that it wasn't "morning in America" -- it was fucking midnight.

Yes, some of the hardcore scene was just nihilism and self-destruction -- but, hey, what's wrong with that as a political statement? Furthermore, a lot of it wasn't. Bands like L.A.'s Black Flag (headed, in its later years, by Henry Rollins, this movement's only true celebrity), Washington's Minor Threat (which spawned the still-extant band Fugazi) or Boston's SS Decontrol served to crystallize and focus dissent among white kids who rejected everything about the social revolution Reaganism had waged on their behalf.

Some of "American Hardcore" is amusing -- many of the aging punks Rachman and Blush track down have turned into highly ordinary middle-aged Americans -- and some is profoundly disturbing. Whether you were there or not, you'll witness an extraordinary variety of low-res VHS recordings of obscure live gigs at all sorts of now-decommissioned venues. OK, I once saw the Circle Jerks and Suicidal Tendencies play (and it was terrifying). But I definitely never saw the Zero Boys of Indianapolis, or Richmond, Va.'s White Cross, or the Necros from Toledo. You can virtually taste the blood and smell the vomit, or the other way around as the case may be.

How much did hardcore music and the hardcore sensibility shape the invasion of "alt-culture" into mainstream culture, which occurred long after the first hardcore scene had evaporated, around 1985 or '86? That's a topic for somebody's dissertation, not for me right now. But I can tell you this: A lot of these bands sucked then, and suck now. They had nothing to offer but unchanneled, incoherent rage. But the Bad Brains, and Black Flag, and DOA, and Flipper, and Negative FX, and a few others, fucking rocked ass. They had to break up and grow up and leave their own scene behind, or they'd have become exactly the thing they hated. (Opens Sept. 22 in New York and Sept. 29 in Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.)

Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy" is something like an ultra-economical remake of "Sideways," with music by Yo La Tengo and the plot pushed from the dialogue into the images. Two 40-ish old friends in Portland, Ore., Mark (Daniel London) and Kurt (Will Oldham), go on a camping trip in the Cascade Mountains, get lost looking for a deep-woods hot spring, and spend the night in the middle of nowhere shooting at beer cans with a pellet gun. They find the hot spring the next day, have a soak and go home. That's pretty much it.

But there's an entire world of emotion between these guys, and even if we never discover exactly what the source of the rift or drift between them is, we get enough clues to feel its intensity. Mark and Kurt are aging urban slackers of an identifiable vintage (they probably once liked at least some of the bands in "American Hardcore"). Mark's the faintly responsible one who's finally gotten married and is having a kid. Kurt's the one who's still deliberately rootless, traveling North America in search of an elusive, transformative bliss. If you're somewhere near that demographic yourself, these guys will have the transparency (and opacity) of real people; they won't require explanation.

"Old Joy" (adapted by writer Jonathan Raymond from his own short story) is only 76 minutes long, but it has the contemplative power of Buddhist meditation. Reichardt gives us long, stoned takes of rural roads; shots of birds, insects and slugs in the spectacular Oregon rain forest; interludes with Mark's dog, Lucy. Some viewers may well be bored, or monumentally irritated, by this. I found it masterly, riveting. (Now playing at Film Forum in New York, and also in Ashland, Bend and Portland, Ore. Opens Oct. 6 in Northampton, Mass.; Oct. 13 in Los Angeles; Oct. 20 in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Calif., and New Haven, Conn.; and Nov. 3 in Albuquerque, Chicago, Montgomery, Ala., and Pittsburgh, with more cities to follow.)

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