Garrett is so real to me and encapsulates all of the good and bad traits we men carry around in us; the ability to be cruelly insensitive, the ability to love someone so much that their life orbits around it, and the ability to put aside our selfish needs from time to time when someone we love really needs us. The scene between Jack and Shirley at the airport, when he tells her he loves her in a way only Jack can, brought tears to my eyes. However, the one performance I can't seem to stop thinking about is from About Schmidt.
On the contrary, I think he takes on subject matter that almost always has a flawed protagonist who can be challenged to grow, or fail trying. In Citizen Ruth, I think the most important scene is where Ruth has miscarried and through some hidden well of humanity, is about to make herself vulnerable for the first time in the film and admit the truth to Diane, Swoozie Kurtz's character. Unfortunately, Diane can't hear what she's saying since all she's focused on it the whole "let's get you to the abortion clinic" situation.
So, Ruth gives up trying to change, steals the money and probably ends up huffing every cent of it away. Jim McAllister in Election thinks he's a good, moral and ethical man (what's the difference between moral and ethics? Anyone?
), but his flaws become his undoing and eventually consume him. In Sideways, Miles simultaneously overestimates and underestimates his value to the world and makes a series of morally questionable decisions throughout his life. Unlike his other protagonists, though, Miles actually has an epiphany and the ending is by far the most hopeful of any of Payne's films.
The saddest of these is most definitely About Schmidt, though. From the opening of Warren Schmidt, marking time on his last day in the office like he had every day of the past twenty years, as he prepares to retire so he can mark the time counting down to his eventual demise, Schmidt is a walking cautionary tale. The film abuses him incessantly, as you see what a pathetic harvest a life of compromise will get you.
The complete disregard he is shown by his co-workers and successor that show how unimportant his career really was. The exceptional contempt his wife and daughter have for him is difficult to watch, and Warren's realization of this as he pours out his heart to Ndugu is some of Nicholson's very best work. This man, who had allowed himself to be caged for so long, realizes his plight but has no concept of how to escape it.
His wife's last words to him, "Don't Dilly Dally", as he departs to run some errands, show the hierarchy of his life that he has chosen to be restrained by, and I love his little rebellion at the Dairy Queen, as he chooses the medium, his wife's wishes be damned. Throughout all of this, and especially at the final moment of realization of what his life means while reading the letter about Ndugu, Nicholson does things I, as an actor, couldn't even comprehend how to do. How does Jack Nicholson, one of the most vital, randy, and exuberant actors ever to cross the big screen find within him the ability to portray someone whose essence, soul and joie de vivre have been completely drained by a life of easy choice.
It's by far a more nuanced and amazing performance than the one in As Good As It Gets, and it's sad that he got his most recent Oscar for the latter than the former. Thanks for bringing up such an interesting subject! Now I have to watch Chinatown this weekend.
Garrett is so real to me and encapsulates all of the good and bad traits we men carry around in us; the ability to be cruelly insensitive, the ability to love someone so much that their life orbits around it, and the ability to put aside our selfish needs from time to time when someone we love really needs us.
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