About Schmidt
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About Schmidt (2002) is an American film directed by Alexander Payne and starring Jack Nicholson as Warren Schmidt and Hope Davis as his daughter Jeannie. It is based on the 1996 novel of the same title by Louis Begley.
The film begins with the retirement of Schmidt from his position as an actuary in an insurance company in Omaha, Nebraska. Schmidt finds it hard to adjust to his new life and feels useless and impotent. One evening, he is detachedly watching a television advertisement about a foster program for African children. Images of suffering children play before him and something moves within him - perhaps the idea of youth, now lost to him - and he enters the sponsorship program and soon receives an information package with a photo of "his" foster child, a small Tanzanian boy named Ndugu, to whom he relates his life in self-centric letters. The main narrative of the film follows Schmidt as he goes on a road trip in order to attend the wedding of his daughter to a man and family he doesn't particularly like at all.
Plot
The film is overcast and rather pessimistic from the beginning, Schmidt's doom sensed by the audience as he seems to 'sit down for the last time' in narrating his wasted life to Ndugu. However, the point is that there are great flashes of optimism, of hope for the beaten Schmidt that it may in fact not be too late. Interestingly, the film opens with a death and a funeral, and closes with a wedding. The paradox is that the funeral gives the audience a sense of hope and freedom for Schmidt, that he might regain a life - a passion, a curiosity about the world and a venturing into it, perhaps to see Tanzania and meet Ndugu (the audience hopes), whereas his ultimate chance to break with the humdrum routine of existence which is granted at the wedding is failed, and thus the wedding - an event usually associated with happiness and hope - is when the audience feels final pessimism for the lost and pathetic Schmidt.
Schmidt's life is neither pleasant nor interesting, beautiful nor passionate. He retires from a lifetime's work in an insurance company at an interchangeable retirement dinner at a cheap function centre with its usual plates of beef and boiled broccoli and predictable speeches, recognisable details reminiscent of such novels as It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. He doesn't know what to do with his days now that a lifetime's routine and conditioning is removed from his institutionalised existence and he visits his young successor, a version of whom he himself had been forty years earlier, who impatiently - though with a fake cheeriness - ushers him back out the door with an insincere "welcome back any time" and a handshake, and Schmidt leaves the building only to see the entire contents of his office and working life in the basement, set out for the garbage-collectors. Nothing remains as evidence of his thousands of days spent there.
Nor is there any warmth or engagement in his home life. He describes his longtime alienation from his frumpy and nagging wife, and the audience feels a combination of resentment and pity towards him for trapping himself and being trapped in such a life. However, his wife suddenly dies from a blood clot in her brain. His friends and his daughter Jeannie, from whom he rarely hears but who returns from Denver, briefly console him at a funeral ridden with insincere expressions of condolence and untruthful remarks about what a great woman she had been, with clichéd emotional reactions that contradict themselves through dirty arguments over money and meaningless trivialities such as cheap funeral caskets. Jeannie intends to marry Randall Hertzel (played by Dermot Mulroney), a union opposed by Schmidt, who feels that the dim-witted salesman is not up to any woman's standards, and is especially unsuited to his own daughter. Randall recommends the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner to Schmidt and then tries to entice him into a pyramid scheme. The audience hopes Jeannie will not throw her life away as her father has, and wills Schmidt to 'save' his daughter, and hopes for their reconciliation. But this film is not a fairytale, though it uses humour and emotion brilliantly to keep optimism alive. It is utterly truthful, darkly and wearily honest, the story of a dead man who happens to still be alive, and the dead society in which he has died through passively going along its passages. After the couple returns to Denver, Colorado, Schmidt is again left alone.
His decay continues, weeks of no washing, of sleeping and waking in front of the television, of eating the entire contents of the kitchen, of trips outside with a coat over pyjamas. But hope flares again. He decides to take a journey in his new Winnebago to see his daughter and convince her not to marry. When he phones her to tell her he is coming a few weeks earlier than planned for the wedding, she meanly insists that he only arrive shortly before the wedding. The coldness of the relationships he has had with his empty and boring wife and daughter, both greedy, petty and materialistic women, is clear. The audience feels a mixure of sympathy for how they have treated Schmidt, ganging up on and using him, and of disrespect for his weakness at allowing himself to have been beaten down and used by them, but now feels hope for him, that he will show some backbone no matter how late in life he is. He is not completely blind to his daughter's stupidity - though he loves her deeply because of their kinship, because he needs connections and love - and, through knowing this, the audience feels optimistic for Schmidt.
Schmidt then decides to travel to places of his past instead. After a short journey punctuated by sad revelations (his childhood home, for example, has been replaced by a tire shop), Schmidt arrives in Denver shortly before his daughter's wedding. He meets her fiancé's appalling family and tries to dissuade her from the marriage, but she will not listen. She and her fiance say terrible things to one another and the family conversation and interaction is full of tension, depravity, criticism and ugly language, yet at the wedding is terribly and insincerely pleasant. The wedding features every cold cliche possible. Fights and divorce and a continuation of the class- and family-chain are clearly on the horizon of Jeannie. The audience wills Schmidt to stand up to it, to at least save his own dignity when he cannot save his daughter. But Schmidt cannot help himself giving into the chain of these sad lifetimes and, at the wedding when he stands to deliver a speech to the couple, it is his one chance at a last possibility of redemption, his last chance to follow his instincts that this marriage is terribly wrong, but he does not. It is the climax of the film. He gives in and delivers a weary speech, so identical to a million wedding-speeches before that the audience can nearly recite along with him, which is the intention.
It is the most tired, emotionless, cliche-filled, insincere speech possible, but nobody seems to notice, precisely because all these people are prisoners of this chain. Schmidt sees it, knows it, but has been part of it his whole life. He does not take this chance at redemption and, after the speech, retires to sickness at himself in the bathroom, a broken man. This is the tragedy of Schmidt. When he returns home, his narrative to Ndugu questions what he has possibly accomplished in his life, what he has achieved, or contributed, or what relationships he has formed; he knows there was nothing with his wife nor with his daughter. A decaying and broken man, he opens the door of his neglected and empty home and the audience recalls what he had said as he described being an actuary earlier in the film, about knowing that, given his life's circumstances of gender, age, widowhood, he will die within nine years. The audience knows he has come home to die, alone.
The one tiny gleam of sunlight is the continuing narration to Ndugu, the audience still wondering if, possibly, something is still going to happen to miraculously change Schmidt's life. A pile of mail is waiting for him inside the empty house. Wearily, but with a glimmer of hope that the audience feels, Schmidt opens a surprise letter from Tanzania. It is written by a nun who cares for Ndugu, and she writes briefly but warmly that the little boy cannot read nor write but enjoy's Schmidt's letters very much. A hand-drawn picture is enclosed, two smiling brown people in the blazing sun. Schmidt's eyes tear as he sits with his back to the grey Nebraska day, alone, high above the pale street. It is the closest relationship he has ever formed; a little boy he has never met, who does not know his face or his voice and cannot even read those letters with their human truth that had been voiced only once in this lifetime. The film ends.
Classification and Awards
The movie has been rated R ("Restricted; Under 17 Requires Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian") in the United States for some profanity and a brief sequence of nudity in a scene where Randall's sexually promiscuous mother Roberta (played by Kathy Bates, known for her lead role in Misery) tries to seduce Schmidt in a hot tub.
Jack Nicholson was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 2003 and Kathy Bates was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role but neither won. The film did receive the 2003 Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture, as well as the Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (Jack Nicholson).
Trivia
- The shot where Schmidt has dozed off while writing a letter in his bathtub is supposed to resemble the Jacques-Louis David painting "Death of Marat".
- Listed on a cinema marquee in a scene of the movie: (Left) Closed for repairs / (Right) Sideways. Sideways ended up being the next movie directed by Alexander Payne.
- The church shown during the wedding rehearsal is in Boulder, Colorado, 20 miles northwest of Denver. The church can be seen on the right from Hwy. 36 just as you enter town.
- Scenes supposedly taking place in a neighborhood in Denver actually were filmed in Omaha.
- Scenes supposedly taking place at the University of Kansas were actually shot at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
- The production crew created a lifetime Endowed Scholarship for the real-life Ndugu, Abdallah Mtulu, through the real Childreach organization.
- The scene where Warren is swinging on the monkey bars was filmed at Steinhart Park, in Nebraska City, Nebraska.
- A scene that echoes Jack Nicholson's famous diner scene in Five Easy Pieces (1970) (his exchange with the waitress) was in an early cut of the movie in which Schmidt concedes in a cowardly fashion to the dictates of the waitress. Though the preview audience went wild over it, director Alexander Payne cut it from the final film because he felt that the scene was too much of a pointed reference to Jack Nicholson's iconography and that something so referential took the audience out of the film.
- The movie theater that Warren drives by before he goes to the museum to look at the arrowheads is the Pioneer 3 in Nebraska City, Nebraska. The "museum" is a Civil War museum in the same town, just down the street.
- The Woodmen Life Assurance Co. is an actual firm. Jack Nicholson filmed his scenes at the company's offices and was given a plaque making him an honorary Woodmen member.
- The word "Ndugu" means "brother" literally in Kiswahili (same as Swahili). It is also used as slang for "friend" as in the US.
- The film's plot involves the children's charity "Childreach". Since 2002, the year of the film's release, the organization has referenced the film and featured its poster in its literature for prospective child sponsors.
- Nationally syndicated political cartoonist Jeff Koterba had a walk-on role in the film; however, it was cut from the final version.
- Once the filmmakers bought the rights to the Louis Begley novel, they kept the title and the main character but changed just about everything else. In the book, the main character lived in the Hamptons and his daughter was about to marry a lawyer.
- The person Warren listens to on his car stereo is famous conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
- Nicholson would fly back to Los Angeles during filming for every Lakers home game.
- Melissa Hanna, who plays "Dairy Queen Employee", is an actual employee of the Dairy Queen in Omaha, Nebraska where her scene was filmed.
- A scene where Schmidt pees all over the bathroom is replaced on the television and airplane versions of the movie with a scene where he talks to a neighbor about the loss of Helen.
- A scene where Schmidt has to spend a night in jail for shop lifting a case of Preparation H and a bottle of JB Scotch was cut before the film was released.
- Other actors were also in the movie but cut before release. These were (with their character names): Tim Driscoll (Grocery Store Manager) and Jeff Morris (Farmer at Gas Station).
- Thomas Haden Church was originally considered for Randall. Payne later cast him for the role of Jack in Sideways, his next film.
- Alexander Payne owns the Winnebago that Schmidt drives during the movie.
Posters
Box office
- Opening weekend U.S. gross: $8,533,162
- Total U.S. box office gross: $65,010,106
DVD
External link
- [About Schmidt] at the Internet Movie Database
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