|
COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
The new Alexander Payne movie, "About Schmidt," is, when you get down to it, about Schmidt. In fact, it is all about Schmidt (Jack Nicholson). There is barely a scene in which, glazed with inertia, he does not swinishly loll. Our initial sight of Warren Schmidt finds him sitting in his office at an Omaha insurance company, as he has sat, more or less, for thirty-five years. (In Louis Begley's novel, of which mere traces remain, Schmidt was a Manhattan attorney.) Today is his last day in the business; from here on, he will find that, to his loved ones, as to the unloved hordes who constitute the rest of society, he has shrunk to a spent force.
Schmidt is married to Helen (June Squibb), whom we are invited to mock for her orderly ways; it is an especially cruel stroke, on the director's part, to kill her off as she cleans the house. Schmidt himself is no less persnickety; once widowed, he asks his daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), to tend him, telling her precisely how to make his lunch as if instructing troops in the loading of a gun. Soon enough, Jeannie retires from the fray, leaving Schmidt to cope on his own. After a brief interval of chaos, he climbs aboard the family Winnebago and embarks on what I fear...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
