Nicholson's Film About a Hollow Man Full of Meaning

My friend and I recently attended a church service as the guests of a couple in a small group Bible study we’d been attending. The study was on Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life, and the church had integrated the study into its services. The week we went, the topic was evangelism, and the sermon concerned reaching out to others outside the Christian community and sharing your faith with them. It concluded with the final scene in About Schmidt, a film I had been wanting to see but still hadn’t yet. Although the scene did not so much illustrate the importance of evangelism, it did demonstrate how the human need for a feeling of purpose is best fulfilled by an assurance that our lives have made a difference to someone else, even if it is just one person. A few days ago, my friend and I watched the movie together, and while much of it was rather dreary and depressing, I ultimately found the film very moving.

This is the movie that afforded us all those glamorous shots of Jack Nicholson looking like something the cat dragged in and promptly ran away from. He’s looking awfully rough here, and with good reason. Warren Schmidt (Nicholson) is a man doomed to the realization that he is 66 years old with nothing to show for it. He retires from a lifelong job at an insurance company, placated by the platitudes heaped on him by a longtime coworker and the young man replacing him. But when he accepts the upstart’s invitation to return to the office and give him a few pointers, he receives the royal brush-off and spies his life’s work sitting in boxes on the curb for the trash man to pick up. He’d looked forward to a cozy retirement with his wife, Helen, traveling around the country in their cushy mobile home, but now that he’s home with her all the time he finds all of her idiosyncrasies intolerable. When Helen (June Squibb) dies suddenly, his marital apathy leaves him with a load of guilt that is only eased when he discovers that years ago, she had an affair with the friend who so eloquently toasted him at the retirement banquet.

So begins a quest of self-discovery that will last throughout the course of the movie. Feeling betrayed, rejected and useless, Warren embarks on a road trip, revisiting the sites of his early life and hoping to rekindle some forgotten memories. But everywhere he goes, it seems life has gone on with no record of his existence. He feels utterly obsolete. Even his beloved daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), about to be wed to a waterbed salesman, Randall (Dermott Mulroney), of whom Warren disapproves, rejects him, and Warren must sit idly by and watch as his daughter marries into an oddball family and out of her father’s life.

Everything in the film points to the emptiness that consumes Warren. The sparse score adds to film’s overall mood of uneasy quietude. Warren himself is largely silent. He appears to be passive-aggressive, always careful not to ruffle any feathers but inwardly seething about the unfairness of his life. This isn’t to say that he is a wholly admirable character. He is very self-centered and used to being taken care of. He doesn’t have the nasty streak displayed by many of Nicholson’s characters, but he also lacks Nicholson’s abundant charm. He’s a hollow man who only truly opens up and allows himself his full range of emotions in his letters to Ndugu, a young African boy he decides to sponsor. Along with 22 dollars a week, he sends the child poignant reflections and virulent rants that the audience hears in voiceover while observing Warren’s activities.

Nicholson is fantastic as the disenfranchised Warren, a decent everyman who feels his life is devoid of meaning. He truly carries the film. Although it is clear Warren despises Randall, I thought Mulroney made the character very likable. A bit of a do-nothing, perhaps, but a very nice guy who loves Warren’s daughter and is always pleasant to Warren in spite of the latter’s thinly veiled hostility. Davis, meanwhile, seemed to go out of her way to make Jeannie unlikable, perhaps to emphasize Warren’s shaky grasp of reality. His sweet little girl is gone, never to return as far as we can tell. Also worth note is Kathy Bates as Roberta, Randall’s libidinous mother, whose much-ballyhooed hot tub encounter with Warren is brief but uncomfortably hilarious. Howard Hesseman, meanwhile, provides humor as Randall’s easy-going, speech-making father, Larry.

But perhaps the real star of the movie is the one who never appears at all, the unseen foil to Warren’s tortured soul. Somewhere on the other side of the world is a little boy named Ndugu who can’t read but understands that Warren Schmidt cares enough to send him money and write him letters. Warren lives a privileged life that is full of disappointments; Ndugu is an orphan who resides in a state of poverty but feels rich because his life has been touched by this hollow man. About Schmidt is a sad movie about a broken man, but perhaps this one-sided correspondence is just enough to help Warren’s emptiness heal.

My Apologies to Art Garfunkel

Anyone who is fairly familiar with my interests will no doubt find it strikingly odd that I should choose a movie in which Art Garfunkel was involved to stand as the worst Valentine film I can think of. There are others, I am sure, but the irony is too good to let go here. My favorite singer, whose romantic ballads could sweep a girl off her feet, is also partly responsible for this film that I find so utterly un-romantic. I have thought about reviewing it for some time, but I have been too reluctant to plaster two stars on anything involving Garfunkel. I'm casting off my inhibitions now, and if Mr. Garfunkel ever would happen to read this, I apologize. I can only say that he is not the reason that this movie failed in my eyes.

Just the name of the movie, Carnal Knowledge, gives a pretty good idea of what the movie?s driving theme will be. The movie focuses on two men, whom we meet as college roommates in the 1940s. Sandy (Garfunkel) is a doe-eyed idealist, naive and clumsy around girls but searching for a meaningful relationship. Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) is world wise and rather vicious. His charm wins the ladies over, but his abrasiveness causes them to leave him.

The beginning of the film details Sandy's pursuit of Susan (Candace Bergen) and his eventual triumph. There are some really cute scenes here of Sandy trying to woo her and having no idea how to do it. Susan eventually takes pity on him and agrees to be with him, but soon afterwards she becomes involved with Jonathan. This is apparently the first truly satisfying relationship Jonathan has ever had. He actually enjoys talking to Susan and spending time with her. Sandy doesn't realize that Susan is doing double duty, and he never finds out because Jonathan isn't quite as big a rat as he appears. He breaks it off with Susan for Sandy's sake, and Sandy and Susan get married.

Well, now Jonathan's in a pickle, but we figure he'll find someone else in no time. Meanwhile, at least we know Sandy and Susan will live happily ever after...or do we? Unfortunately, this is not what happens. Several years down the line, we see Sandy complaining to Jonathan about his unfulfilling romantic life with his wife. Eventually Sandy stops mentioning her, and next time we see him he?s with someone else. Jonathan, meanwhile, finds a new flame in Bobbie, a role for which Ann-Margret received an Academy Award nomination. Their life together begins happily, but it soon deteriorates. He is never around, and when he is, he?s abusive. The once vivacious and beautiful Bobbie spends her days sleeping and drunk.

The film progresses. and Jonathan and Sandy grow older and older and still find no satisfaction. Jonathan's attitude seems to have influenced the initially guileless Sandy, and he comes more and more to expect from his relationships something which cannot be attained. Jonathan, meanwhile, drives Bobbie to a suicide attempt and is guilted into marrying her, but he is still miserable, and the movie ends with him at a sex therapist.

This is a movie about two old friends who helped ruin each other's lives. It is more about the attitudes of certain men towards intimacy, and how both extremes are ultimately unsuccessful. Nichols has taken the aimlessness which he sought to portray in The Graduate and taken it one step further. Obviously he was trying to make a point, but if I was slightly befuddled by The Graduate, I found Carnal Knowledge downright baffling. The story becomes confused and unclear after the friends leave college. Susan simply disappears and we never see any mention of her again except when Jonathan accidentally includes her picture in a slideshow of women he has slept with.

This is definitely not a children's movie. There is quite a bit of nudity, for rather obvious purposes. The language is filthy. Probably half the dialogue would be blocked out by the Epinions censors! There is some violence, with Jonathan as the perpetrator. These same things added to my discomfort with the film. It's a terribly depressing movie; it would certainly put a damper on a romantic Valentine's Day evening. And it simply lacks the congruity that I seek in a film. I really have no complaints about the acting. I think all four major characters were portrayed well by their actors. But I thought the script didn't give them much to work with, at least after the college segment. If you're an avid fan of one of the people involved (that was why I saw it), it's worth it to rent it just to say that you saw it. But I wouldn't set my hopes too high.