About Schmidt
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This is what you need to know About Schmidt: he’s 66 years old, has just retired from Woodman Insurance, and can accurately predict an individual's life expectancy. He has been married for forty-two years, he has a daughter (who he doesn't picture past the age of eight), and he assumes he has about nine years left.

So begins the darkly comedic, existential journey of Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson), a modern day Willie Loman on a quest for meaning. In a state-of- the-art mobile home, Schmidt heads across the American heartland to stop his daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), from marrying a mullet-headed underachieving waterbed salesman, Randall (Dermot Mulroney) -- but this is only a vehicle for a voyage that is as spiritual as it is physical. His entire adventure is uniquely narrated in the form of letters he writes to his nine-year-old Tanzanian foster child, Ndugu, confessing things he hasn't told anyone else, while also demonstrating his general ignorance of the world.

Schmidt, like Loman -- the broken, pathetic protagonist from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman -- has spent his entire life as a conformist in pursuit of the American dream. At the end of the road, he finds himself bitter, betrayed, angry, afraid, and ultimately lost. In Schmidt as in Salesman, this theme is repeatedly observed. Here, the cow being lead to the slaughter, marks the most definitive symbol -- from the very beginning, at Schmidt's retirement party, his photograph is shown immediately after a picture of the restaurant's prize-winning calf, and slaughterhouse trucks appear throughout his journey to underscore the point. Furthermore, Nicholson, one of the founding fathers of the Hollywood Bad Boy image, executes his portrayal of the character with a resounding authenticity.

At a time when most drama is sliding the slippery slope of sentimental sap by wrapping up every loose end in happy Hollywood bow, it would have been very easy for About Schmidt to over sentimentalize. Nonetheless, the film remains genuine throughout, even imparting its redemptive message of hope in a morbidly wry manner that makes it all the more significant.

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