SlipOfTheTongue Blog

Under discussion:

About Schmidt  (2002)

In ABOUT SCHMIDT, the main character played by Jack Nicholson is retiring.  He has lived the part of insurance salesman and husband in life and is now left alone with his thoughts, knowing that he has not accomplished much and that his marriage of 42 years has been characterized chiefly by compromise and stoicism.  Warren Schmidt has developed the kind of emotional numbness, the near zombification that many impending American retirees fear.  His numbness is a mask for the lifelong fear that he has been and still is powerless to rise above his own mediocrity and to transcend the roles in which life has him cast.

"Dear Ndugu"…he writes in a series of letters to the six-year-old African boy whom he sponsors.  Each letter is a confessional, a cry for help from Schmidt’s imprisoned soul.  Each letter is also accompanied by a check that he sends to buy the boy food.  Even the act of confession comes at a price.  Schmidt is someone who has never been able to express himself without having to pay.  Before this character can explode (like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, or act out like George Burns in Going Out Of Style) the supernova that is Schmidt fizzles like a damp fuse. 

Nicholson is terrific in the role.  His performance is slightly stylized (glassy eyed vacant stares, emotionally blank non-responsive looks) but at the same time he achieves a balance.  Most actors are not capable of walking the line between comedy and melancholy as adroitly as Nicholson does in this film.  If it were not for director Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election) the comedy could have spun off into camp or the melancholy could have led us down an Ordinary People-type path, one which comments on how individuals can live their entire lives without ever acting out their true emotions.  Fortunately Payne (also the screen writer) keeps the movie headed in the right direction.  The point is not that Schmidt is unable to take action; it is that he takes actions that are unsuccessful.  His attempt to express his anger at a best friend who has betrayed him or to order his daughter (Hope Davis) not to marry the loser (Dermot Mulroney) she has fallen in love with are only attempts.  In an effort to become more self-realized and active as a human being Schmidt only succeeds in re-affirming his life status as a competent but unremarkable failure that has never quite been able to connect with his loved ones or with the universe in general.

Payne’s controlled, somewhat muted approach to the material may frustrate some viewers.  The polish of the cinematography, the slow minor-chord precision of the piano based soundtrack, the emotional bleakness of the landscapes, all threaten to make this film feel like an echo of Schmidt himself – a controlled nightmare that is difficult to enjoy.  At times it could be asked, is the movie too controlled to be emotionally satisfying?  And yet, Payne pulls it off by balancing the comedy with the pathos.  He keeps us wondering what Schmidt will do next.

The movie is sure footed and Nicholson’s performance takes all the right baby steps toward the final conclusion (Schmidt is a character that does not move in leaps and bounds).  This last moment is realized with the right balance of tenderness, comedy and suffering so that nothing else is felt to be required or needed when the credits roll.  For those of you who do not care for the bittersweet or who crave something wildly unpredictable, this film is not for you.  But for those of us who crave an accurate expression of just how blended the tonality of real life is, and how easily we can all become trapped in our prescribed roles, ABOUT SCHMIDT is a movie to relish.  As in life, the choice is up to you.

Under discussion:

The Poseidon Adventure  (1972)

America loves disaster movies.  A current crop of them is burning itself out now (The Day After Tomorrow, Poseidon) but the genre will cycle around again someday.  This recent wave has much to do with the readily available C.G.I. technologies that allow us to build entire worlds on our computer desktops, and more to do with our post 9/11 fears.  As a form of release, disaster movies give us a way to live out our worst nightmares and emerge from these vicarious experiences alive and emotionally unscathed. 

AIRPORT launched the modern disaster genre back in 1970.  THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE followed in ‘72.  You can choose to love these movies or to wince at their cheesy centers.  These movies are replete with cornball heroics, craven cowards and unsuspecting victims.  They are generally ensemble dramas which unfold like this… 1.) establish characters and setting… 2.) insert disaster (bomb on a plane, tidal wave, earthquake, raging fire)… 3.) let the audience watch as certain characters live while others die.  The best of these films leave us guessing as to who will make it.  Is it cunning, hard work, common sense, or brute strength that define the survivors?  Will people turn on each other or team up?  In this way, we observe in disaster flicks a sort of democracy in action.  Everyone starts out with the same potential for survival.  In the end determination and hard work are only part of the equation.  In order to survive you also need luck. 

THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE is populated with well-drawn characters and great scene chewing performances.  Gene Hackman is the anti-establishment priest who tests his thesis that God helps those who get off their asses and work.  He is passionate, cynical and idealistic.  Ernest Borgnine’s blue-collar cop (Rogo) is the preacher’s foil.  He questions Hackman’s theories and puts Hackman’s egotism under a spotlight.  Their constant dialectic (about which path to take toward the bow) keeps the movie afloat until the body count really begins to rise.  Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson play a loving older couple (Manny and Belle Rosen).  There is decency in these people, if somewhat overstated in the script.  Winters’ performance is a camp classic.  When she dives into a flooded compartment to save a trapped Hackman it’s a shocking moment because her character has been so physically and emotionally vulnerable up to that point.  When Belle finally buys it we realize that anyone can die, and that there is no equating deservedness with survival.  She endows Belle with so much decency that her loss creates a void that the passengers and the movie must deal with from that point forward.  It takes us to the bottom of the dramatic curve, which continues as two more characters lose their lives in the final act.  Other notables in the cast include Red Buttons and Carol Lynley (who reportedly hated each other on the set but you’d never know it), and the likeable Roddy McDowall as Acres.  Stella Stevens is Linda Rogo, and yes...there are some bratty kids too.  The youngest of the kids (Eric Shea) serves the dramatic purpose of keeping Rogo humble and instructing the group about the layout of the ship after Acres is gone.  The other (Pamela Sue Martin) develops a crush on Hackman.

If all of this doesn’t sound like nearly enough, it is.  The movie is far greater than the sum of its parts and it’s a thousand times better than the 2006 remake.  THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE rises above its cheesy opening and confectionary trifle of a theme song because (like its main characters) it is so damned earnest and unrelenting.  It doesn’t know it’s a bad movie.  It thinks it’s a great one.

The common denominators for success in this movie reside in character, performance and, to some extent script (a script whose structural backdrop touches on themes of human determinism and community).  The people who survive do so because they have worked together.  They have defied the common wisdom of “stay put and wait for rescue”.  One can’t help but be reminded of poor souls who died in the World Trade Center because they waited for authorities to come and get them.  This cheesy B-movie got it right, back in 1972.  Question authority.  Use your heads.  Take nothing for granted.  Is there really any authority we can trust anymore? 

The effective music was composed by John Williams.  Irwin Allen (The Towering Inferno, The Swarm) was at the helm as producer and Ronald Neame (Scrooge, Meteor) directed.  Most of the visual effects are practical (fires, falling debris, the interior of the ship rocking to and fro) but they work.  Even today when so much movie making is done on computers there is a certain feeling of credibility that practical effects have.  The film won an Oscar for best original song (The Morning After), and Shelley Winters was nominated for Best Supporting Actress but lost.  The film did, however, win a Golden Globe for best drama and was nominated for a total of eight Oscars.  It won a special achievement Oscar for visual effects.

THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE begins on a bed of such 70’s camp that the drama which follows seems almost unfathomable. Ultimately, all themes advanced by the individual characters will be swept aside by one major tenet – life is preferable to the alternative.  In Hackman’s words some hour or so before he falls into a fiery pit while screaming at God…“life always matters very much”.  Cheesy yes, but putting the Hallmark card sentiment aside, think of what the words mean.  Every soldier knows that in battle, survival is the thing.  It’s better to be lucky than good.  It’s better to be alive.  Heroism is secondary.  THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE resonates because it transcends the creakiness of its individual parts and tells a story of basic human survival.  We care about the people on screen and we want those last survivors to live.