Posted: 01/05/2003

About Schmidt

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Perhaps a bit less personal viewpoint…

As we watch some movies, they disturb us in ways in which we are not sure. About Schmidt was one of those movies and it took me a couple of days to figure it out. What came to me was that it shows a man entering the older years of his life, not sure what he has done to make a mark on the world. It is a gentle shake on the shoulder to remind us to appreciate what we have achieved and focus on what else we would like to do in this life. From that point of view, About Schmidt was a good movie.

Starring Jack Nicholson as Warren Schmidt, the movie opens with our hero staring at the clock in his newly empty office, ticking off the last seconds, on his last day of work as an actuary for a large insurance carrier in Omaha. Could you set a more boring setting? Accountants make jokes about how boring actuaries are and here’s one who rose “all the way up” to a mid-management position in a midrange insurance company, in a nondescript city in the middle of the prairie.

The first act of highlighting his desperation are shown in three ways. The first is when his replacement can’t say anything truly warm about Schmidt’s life during his retirement party. It seemed far more like a memorial service. The second is a most subtle but gut wrenching realization that his work may have meant nothing takes place when Schmidt goes back to his company only to see his previously packed file boxes marked “Files” and “Current Work” in an open, unsecured area apparently being readied for the dumpster. The third occurs shortly after that when his wife unexpectantly dies.

Being an actuary, he knows that he has a 73% chance of dying within 9 nears of losing his spouse and realizes that he has to do something with the time he has left. He grasps at the one thing he feels he did right- his daughter—and attempts to make up for lost time by driving to Denver (climbing out of the mediocrity to the Mile High City) to help with her wedding.

So as he loads up the 35 foot recreational vehicle we go along for the ride on his search for meaning to his life.

Director/writer Alexander Payne (Election, Citizen Ruth) made good use of a cast that includes not only Jack Nicholson (Chinatown, A Few Good Men, Terms of Endearment), but Kathy Bates (Primary Colors, Misery, Titanic) who plays his daughter’s mother-in-law to be. Bates, as Roberta Hertzel, adds the color to the movie opposite Schmidt’s shades of gray and ecru. Their scenes together clearly show why they are two of the best actors in the business. The daughter is Hope Davis (Hearts in Atlantis, Mumford) who is brilliant as Schmidt’s long ignored daughter who resents the late attempts at familiarity. Her betrothed is Dermot Mulroney (He was Julia Robert’s gay confidant in My Best Friend’s Wedding) looking nothing like he has in any of his other movies. His sales job at a waterbed shop, failed attempts at multilevel marketing, and scads of award ribbons in his bedroom marked “Participant” or “Honorable Mention” explain clearly why Schmidt does not like a man who is heading down the same road as himself.

About Schmidt is not always easy to watch, depending how close a look in that mirror we see, but there are lots of light moments along the way which make it an easier trip of discovery to take.

Hank Yuloff is an advertising guy in Los Angeles who clearly has lots more things to get done.

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