FEST2003

About Schmidt
Alexander Payne, director  

 Review by Rada Djurica   

Alexander Payne is from Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated with a history and Spanish literature degree from Stanford University. He also graduated with a film directing degree in 1991 from the Los Angeles Film School. With "Citizen Ruth" (1996), his feature debut, he became critically acclaimed. He's a screenwriter, as well.

Payne, 41, directed "About Schmidt" with the dazzling star role given to Jack Nicholson. In a movie season clogged with legitimate Oscar awards, Alexander Payne made a funny, black humour drama, "About Schmidt." There's Jack, our Jack, with no celebrity sunglasses, in his 60s, as Warren Schmidt. Nicholson/Schmidt is an ordinary man, in a barely perceptible role, almost as emotionally unstable as Jack Torrance in "The Shining" but without the maniac ax attack, of course. Then we have Kathy Bates, in a bizarre role.

Payne alone could have managed to put them up to this. Yes, we're talking about the guy who made critics sit up and take notice with his blistering high school satire, "Election" (1999), and the filmmaker who made abortion a dark joke in "Citizen Ruth" (1996).

"Black humor is a tough sell. If you're not making essentially youthful films, you're taking chances. Alexander is a real throwback to the kinds of moviemakers I started with," Nicholson said recently.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has picked "About Schmidt" as the best picture of 2002, and it was also nominated for Best Actor (Nicholson) and Best Screenplay. And for the Golden Globes, "About Schmidt" was nominated for Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Supporting Actress (Bates), Best Director (Payne) and Best Screenplay.

Like both of Payne's earlier films, it's set in Omaha and involves the absurdity of everyday, normal-looking people facing everyday, normal-sounding problems. It's about retirement and living life responsibly, only to find out that it may mean nothing. What is this film like, then? Satire is the word that comes to mind. Maybe serious comedy?

Schmidt retires and then is surprised by the sudden death of his wife. Uncertain about his future, Warren packs up his camper van to travel across Nebraska to his daughter's wedding. Suddenly, every step he makes seems wrong. Realizing how lonely he is and was all along, Warren fails in his interactions with people, but shares his observations in letters to a poor Tanzanian boy that he's sponsoring for 73 cents a day. In his long letters, Warren begins to see himself and life from a different perspective.

Fellow director Jim Jarmusch has called Payne "a true cinephile." This is a high society filmmaker taking a trip outside of his yard. In "About Schmidt" he explores the deep reservoir of human sadness of one average 60-year-old widower, splashing it with simple yet comic situations. Bates is another recognizable actress. She plays the mother of Schmidt's daughter's fiance and takes off her clothing and climbs into a hot tub with Schmidt, offering to allow him to stay at her house, as "they are related, with no partners now." Bates, as an older woman, is not a spring flower, and having someone like her in a nude scene is not easy to find. A scene like that does require trust. And Payne is a director who seems to be able to get actors to do virtually anything.

The movie is very much outside the Hollywood norm. Everyone who doesn't like big Hollywood movies will definitely like this film.