![]() |
Jack Nicholson is superb as beaten down Warren Schmidt in About Schmidt |
Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: Jack Nicholson (Warren R Schmidt), Kathy Bates (Roberta
Hertzel), Hope Davis (Jeannie Schmidt), Dermot Mulroney (Randall Hertzel), June
Squibb (Helen Schmidt), Howard Hesseman (Larry Hertzel), Len Cariou (Ray
Nichols)

Nicholson is Warren R Schmidt, a recently retired actuary
with an Insurance company in Omaha. As a young man he dreamed of a golden
future, but his life has been one of crushing mundanity and boredom (albeit, I
will say, clearly very well paid!). Schmidt has become a cowed, average, hollow
man – the sort of man who urinates sitting down because his wife insists he
does so and whose idea of defiance is to pop out for a milkshake. After his
wife (June Squibb) suddenly dies, he is forced to deal with the fact that he is
actually largely estranged from his idealised daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) and
that he despises her decent-but-no-hoper fiancée Randall (Dermot Mulroney). Can
he make her abandon the wedding?
Alexander Payne has excelled in this style of film: a
slightly off-centre social comedy with a mix of a lemony sharpness, satirical
wit and genuine warmth for its characters. He perfectly captures the hopes and
dreams of small-town America and the trap of mediocrity and disappointment that
these sort of suburban, unremarkable lives can have. About Schmidt does this brilliantly, by counterpoising the Schmidt’s
feelings of depression and being trapped with the clearly empty dreams of his
daughter’s would-be husband. Not to mention taking shots at the overbearing
try-too-hard irritability of Randall’s bohemian family (who seem to celebrate
the very failures Warren believes his life has been made of).
Payne works in perfect synchronicity with Nicholson, keeping
all the actor’s OTT gestures and mannerisms well in check and pushing him to
create a quiet, timid, worn-out man who is beginning to reflect (with some
bitterness) on what his life has been and been to suspect (with some dread)
what it might be for his daughter. Nicholson’s comic timing and his sense of
empathetic sadness are both absolutely perfect. The film uses a brilliant
device to let us hear Schmidt’s inner monologue via his writing a series of
letters to the African child Ndugo he is sponsoring (hilarious in that he
unleashes on this no doubt uncomprehending young boy a series of bitter,
reflective and sad cries from the heart).
The film is about the disappointments of life, but each point
is told with a dark or wry humour. From Schmidt’s retirement party (an event
that everyone seems to attend only out of duty) to the death of his wife (who
collapses mid hoovering) there is a dark sense of humour throughout. Nicholson
plays these moments with a world-weary sadness that keeps the character
grounded. At other moments, he can let rip with a more overt comic touch as he
struggles with the distaste and alarm he is far too polite to show as he stays
with Randall’s bohemian family (Kathy Bates is very good as the matriarch of
this clan, a woman whose laissez-faire attitude is a front for her tyranny).
The film’s plot is brilliantly simple, and is fundamentally
about how far Schmidt can go in re-evaluating and re-claiming his life, giving
his final years (with his actuary head on he believes he has between 10-12
years left) some sense of individuality. These attempts rotate from sad
starry-night imagined conversations with his late wife to awkwardly comedic
encounters with a nice couple at a camping site, whose signals he completely
misreads. Schmidt is angry – and those moments when it bursts out to Ndugo are
hilarious – but as much with himself as anyone else. After all, who do we have
to blame more than ourselves?
Schmidt isn’t even a bad guy. He’s spot on about Randall, a
decent enough guy but a hopeless businessman and incompetent chancer. A large
chunk of the film’s final act hinges on us knowing that Schmidt is right,
knowing that is daughter is making a huge mistake, but also knowing that we’d
be as powerless about it as Schmidt is. Because the film, in its darkly comic
way, is saying that nearly all of us are on this treadmill – and that nearly
all of us can see that others are as well – but we can’t do anything about it
or help them get off. We can only watch the gears shifting on.
It’s a brilliant, thought-provoking film, very funny in
places – and Jack Nicholson gets to remind us all that he a marvellous, clever
and subtle actor, in one of his finest performances since the 1970s.
Nicholson’s control and likeability are vital to making Schmidt someone whom we
warm to and pity, even while he frustrates. And Payne’s wonderfully directed,
empathetic story illustrates a life of tragedy without meaning and dreams, but
never scoffs at those who lead them – instead it’s only wistfully sad for what
might have been.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.