About Schmidt (2002)

Synopsis: A man retires from his job in an insurance company. Soon after that, his wife dies. He decides to drive his R.V. and visit some places.
Appraisal: This one is very hard to comment upon without falling into commonplace (acting was great, etc.) or gibberish (how sad it was, yadda yadda). It is primarily a character study, which is not a bad thing for a film to be, but not a great thing either. I think it makes a good point by showing that Schmidt is pitiful but not much more so than most of the charaters in the film. Better yet, it hints that what is killing this man, robbing him of his life, of his happiness, of his freedom, is the kind of values he grew up with, his prejudices, everything that has been hammered into his head since he was very little. Take, for example, the line where Schmidt expresses his admiration for Bill Cody, buffalo slayer and clown. It's plain obvious that the tragedy is not that Schmidt hasn't "achieved anything great", but that, were he to achieve it, it probably wouldn't be something good, since his values are twisted and petit-bourgeois -- his model of a great achiever is the man who helped decimate the population of American bison! On another, related, plane, the film undoubtedly succeds in delivering the message that people will reap what they sow in the first place. Too bad this is such a disputable message -- the world is not a fair place, that boy in Africa standing as a pretty good example.
Rating: 66