Spoilers for the 2022 movie Old Man, so watch out for that if you care.
It’s been a while since I needed to post twice in a day, but this was a different enough thing, enough of it’s own thing that I felt it was worth seperating out. Let me paint you a picture and tell you a story, because chances are you aren’t going to watch this movie I have now watched twice.
A young man stands in a clearing of a forest, in front of him, and suddenly in front of us is a house. Smoke comes from the chimney, and the windows are lit up. The camera holds this shot for a few minutes over forboding somewhat peaceful music. Title card; “Old Man”
The young man knocks on a wood door. An old man opens the door holding a shotgun. When he sees the young man he points the shotgun at his face. He asks the young man who he is and what he’s doing there. The young man says his name is Joe, he was walking in the woods.
The old man says Joe doesn’t look like a hiker. Joe says he isn’t a hiker, he just happened to be walking in the woods. The old man wants to make sure that Joe isn’t a salesman, he has a major beef with salesmen. Joe assures him he isn’t. The old man checks that Joe isn’t a teacher or librarian, to which he is assured Joe isn’t.
It is at this point the questions start to go both ways. Joe starts to experience empathy for the old man, and the old man starts to relate to Joe. Both seem to be haunted by the past, and have wives that they seem hesitant to speak of. During the course of their conversation a storm rolls in, trapping Joe in the cabin with the old man.
There’s a legend the old man believes in, of a magic spring that can heal any wound, the purple spring. He’s been looking for it, but never found it. He also tells a story of how he poisoned and tortured a traveling bible salesman, tying him to the wood stove just to watch him squirm.
Throughout the conversation the old man refers to his dog Rascal who ran off on him. There is one other set piece, Joe’s knife. These two points are important because they set off the finale. Joe seems to start to remember some of his troubled past about 20 minutes from the end of the movie.First he remembers his wife’s face and red hair, then he remembers that he had a fight with his wife, and that she may not be there when he gets back. Next he goes to retrieve his knife, which the old man had placed on a shelf. He pulls the blade out of the sheath, and there’s blood on it.
Suddenly, no more Joe, just the old man. The old man starts getting upset. It’s like a lightswitch, the old man had been very much in control the whole movie right up until Joe leaves.
In walks a man, looking very much like Joe, but dressed in black from head to toe and with longer hair. He also speaks in a reverberating voice gravely voice. He is the Rascal, no dog at all. The old man is terrified of him.
The old man is questioning the Rascal about where Joe went. He starts telling the story from the beginning, and Rascal jumps in with the smoke from the chimney bit, then says “It’s always the same words with you.” Shattering realization, this has happened before. “And how did he look? A little like you? A little like me?” Rascal is just a walking exposition machine at this point, which he lampshades “I’m so sick of having to explain this to you.” So eventually he even prods the old man “What happened to your wife?”
They argue a bit, like an abusive married couple, until the old man’s spirit breaks. He agrees to do whatever Rascal wants. Rascal whips out a vial, it’s purple, the purple springs! Rascal says he’s the only one who knows where they are. Which, the actual functioning of the Rascal is the biggest plothole in this whole movie. The only way it really works is if the cabin is outside of time and space.
So the old man drinks the magic elixir. Then Rascal makes the old man get into an old trunk that they’ve been using as a coffee table (they even made cowboy coffee and drank it there). When the lid opens again, he finds himself in a hallway. He turns around, and in his place stands Joe.
In the hallway are pictures, pictures of the bible salesman from earlier with Joe’s wife. Pictures that portray them very much in love. This got to me, brought back memories of the end of my first marriage.
The old man opens the door to his cabin. Joe opens the door to the interior of a house. It turns out to be a bedroom. There stands the bible salesman, and he’s having sex with Joe’s wife right on their bed, wearing his panama hat. They are really going at it. Joe grabs a shotgun, the same shotgun from the beginning of the movie.
Then we’re back in the cabin, the old man faces his wife with blood coming out of her neck, he kneels and begs for mercy. Flash back to Joe with the shotgun, the bible salesman is begging for mercy. These are actually the exact same words that he said during the torture sequence, which the old man had mocked earlier. There are so many paid off moments like this in the movie, I love it.
Joe pulls the trigger, no gore just the bible salesman’s hat being blown back along with unrealistic blood and his wife screaming. Then he goes up to her and he stabs her in the neck.
Then the old man is back in the cabin, with the Rascal, who has more to say.
He spells out the big reveal “You were walking in the woods, you saw the smoke coming from the chimney. You came here after doing what you did.”
Theres just so much here for me. Having a contentious relationship with one’s own inner voices is something I can relate to. My younger self does not like me at all. My older self probably doesn’t like me either right now. I am the Rascal.
That pain too, I can relate all too well to what happened to Joe, before he dissociated and became two other people. Which is the major theme of the movie, what makes it so revolutionary is that it seems to value dissassociation.
Of course the cabin in the woods, the character that isn’t a character is possibly my favorite. They warm themselves by a fireplace, and a woodstove. The whole setup is rather nice, for what it is. They’re in the smokies, so it isn’t going to be as nice as further north. The isolation, the quiet and the lack of pressure is so appetizing is the only word I can think of.