This was one of those movies that I liked throughout the entire film, until the very very end. I was excited during the last scene at what I thought was going to be a great ending. In my opinion, the movie should have ended after Schmidt's voice over saying that he had made no difference to anyone's life. This would have been perfect because obviously he makes a huge difference in the little boy's life whom he was talking (or writing) to. However, then he opens the letter from the nun, and I just wanted to puke because of how corny it was. I think it would have been a lot better if they left that part out, to me this was oversimplifying things; dumbing it down for the audience. Maybe even if they just showed him opening the letter, but noo...
I actually didn't mind the ending, because up until then I was halfway wondering if the movie was going to be REALLY ruthless and reveal that the "adopt-a-child" program Schmidt was enrolled in was just a scam, that Ndugu didn't exist, and that his letters weren't even being read by anyone.
At least it answered the question of whether or not Ndugu was receiving the letters, because up to that point you only hear Nicholson's voice narrating them.
Lol, he didn't do crap for the boy. Aside be completely culturally confusing to him in the letters, and assuming that in the big picture, a few nickles a day really aren't going to change much. It's the LEAST he could do.
This ending absolutely RUINED the movie for me, just like the last scene of Rat Race did. It turned what was essentially a brilliant, smart old man being surrounded by losers into a plea for conforming to everyone elses whims, like when he didn't say anything at the wedding about what a *beep* LOSER the groom was, and then crying like a little girl at that stupid, manipulative letter to complete his journey into being 'a soft hearted pensioner'. WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH.
I still harbour hopes in my head that it IS a scam, that the nun is actually a Nigerian gangster who will fleece him for every penny. That, when he's homeless and derelict and dying of hypothermia on a park bench, he will realise the error of his ways about trying to fit into the mainstream by changing who he is. He'll redeem himself by getting a Glock, going round to his daughter's house and shooting that LO-SER dead, so she can find someone who isn't a complete chump.
In time, she'll realise her father was right, and she'll bring him cookies in prison (though personally I would give him the Congressional medal for shooting dead such a bonehead) and that would neatly solve the homeless problem too! Now if only I could convince them to shoot a remake, with me as head writer... Hmm...
I didn't see it that way. For one thing, the nun says that Ndugu cannot read or write, so the letters being culturally confusing to him is irrelevant. The nun, presumably, has been reading his letters and feels sorry for him, in part because of how clueless he is about how much he has to be grateful for. She's being really gracious by giving him the impression that he's making a difference. Schmidt realizes this and feels gratitude for what he has. Just my impression.
>how clueless he is about how much he has to be grateful for
As an actuary, no doubt he has a very good idea of what to be grateful for - and he's spent his life working for it. But he's also spent his life in fear. Unlike the family his daughter is marrying into, a bunch of risk takers with multiple marriages, and lots of swearing and letting it all hang out, he didn't even really get to know his wife, in a way. He's been sleepwalking. For me the last scene was about human connection and knowing he made a difference, though to only that one person, in that moment. He took that chance to act on his feelings and send the cheque.
I had the same suspicions about the adopt-a-child program. Revealing it to be a scam would have created an ironic echo to Nicholson's contempt for his future son-in-law for investing in a pyramid scheme. Indeed, just the fact that Nicholson picks up the phone right after seeing the ad and doesn't even bother to check its legitimacy suggests more naivete than he's willing to let out.
I personally felt this entire framing device was weak. We never learn anything about the boy, and Nicholson's letters are an exercise in self-indulgence. He's basically talking to himself, telling things about his life as an elderly American suburbanite that a struggling boy in Africa couldn't possibly relate to.
I didn't feel these scenes added anything to the movie. They were essentially a cheap excuse to justify a running monologue, and they introduced an element of social issues that the rest of the movie paid no attention to.
Maybe that explains my cynicism about the program's authenticity. Up to that point, a lot of the movie's sequences were structured so that they would have only comic payoff, as when he ruins his encounter with a nice couple by making a pass at the wife, or when the Kathy Bates character later makes a pass at him. These sequences don't really lead anywhere, and they give the movie an episodic quality, which is why revealing the program to be a scam would have fit right in the mix. Of course, it would have made the ending a total downer. That's why the ending it did have felt so forced and weak--the story had nowhere to go, so it tried to end on a positive note, though concerning a plot point that was never well-developed to begin with.
Maybe that explains my cynicism about the program's authenticity. Up to that point, a lot of the movie's sequences were structured so that they would have only comic payoff, as when he ruins his encounter with a nice couple by making a pass at the wife, or when the Kathy Bates character later makes a pass at him. These sequences don't really lead anywhere, and they give the movie an episodic quality, which is why revealing the program to be a scam would have fit right in the mix. Of course, it would have made the ending a total downer. That's why the ending it did have felt so forced and weak--the story had nowhere to go, so it tried to end on a positive note, though concerning a plot point that was never well-developed to begin with.
The fact that Warren's correspondence & financial assistance sent to Ndugu turns out to be legitimate ties into the theme: While Warren was stuck in the 9-to-5 grind for decades on end he poured his heart & soul into working for the insurance company while neglecting his wife and daughter. Once freed up from that drudgery he's suddenly able to be there for people and really help them, e.g. his daughter and Ndugu.
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That would had been a very cynical ending and would had impacted on such charitable projects. I liked the ending because he did make a difference even it was to a little child.
I actually didn't mind the ending, because up until then I was halfway wondering if the movie was going to be REALLY ruthless and reveal that the "adopt-a-child" program Schmidt was enrolled in was just a scam, that Ndugu didn't exist, and that his letters weren't even being read by anyone.
Yes, it was important for the film to make it clear that the sponsor-a-child program wasn't a scam (which I was seriously wondering about) and thus Ndugu actually existed and was receiving Warren's letters & assistance.
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For me it's what made the movie. I thought Jack Nicholson was very powerful throughout, and it worked well because this scene was quite climatic and Nicholson performed it perfectly. Normally I like the left open endings ala La Dolce Vita, Five Easy Pieces, No Country for Old Men etc. However I felt that the audience deserved closure or at least to see that Scmidt still had something in life. Though this may be Nicholson last great performance I hope I'm wrong, but he was rubbish in The Departed.
The point of that last minute was to show Schmidt's emotional barrier finally bursting, after he kept it walled in for so many years. Schmidt has kept himself emotionally distant and frozen for so long in order to fit into mainstream society, to the point where he's afraid to get in touch with his emotions. Notice how he freaks out when Randall's mother makes a pass at him in the sauna. And the only other time in the movie where he lets his guard down is when he kisses the woman in the trailer, with disastrous results.
So as corny as that final minute might have been, I can see why people might think it was absolutely essential to the resolution of this film.
The final scene of the film is absolutely brilliant and one of the most beautiful scenes in recent film history, and the OP couldn't possibly be more wrong. It wasn't corny in the least. It was an epiphany for a man who is broken emotionally and spirtitually. He has been beaten down, literally for years by his nag of a wife and a daughter that follows in her foot steps, yet its clear that his problems are brought on by his own faults.
This simple moment of gratitude and hope is transcendent. This is perfection in screen writing, and I bawl my eyes out every time I watch it.
I agree totally with chase 437. The last scene is a necessary *emotional* pay off and is not corny in the least. It is there for people who feel for the characters in a film, it's not there for those who just try and intellectualize them to death. All he was sent was a picture. No explanation that the child understood *anything* Warren sent to him. The reason it packs such an emotional wallop is because of our time spent with *Warren*! It's him (and us) looking at that picture. An image as powerful as the sled in Citizen Kane. It doesn't comment on anything preceding in the narrative...that's for the "head" people. It capitalizes on the emotional build up for those who "feel". For all the "head" people it could still be a scam, even the picture drawn by another. For the rest of us, its Warren's response that is devastatingly profound in its implications and tremendously moving. It's literally "about Schmidt."
you are right on one level that it is corny and predictable and i think in a lesser actor's hands it would have been unbearable but Nicholson just manages to avoid sentimentalism by a fine line. but yes yr alternative ending would have worked because at the very moment you see him start to open the letter you realise what it is and what it means without having it spelt out. but sometimes it is cathartic to have things spelt out whether one needs it or not.
One has to remember that just before the very last scene when Warren breaks into tears while looking at the drawing from Indugu, he had been saying in voice-over that he feels like a "failure." In his mind, he went to Denver and was not able to prevent Jeannie from marrying Randall. In his letter at the end, he says "Relatively soon, I will die. Maybe 20 years from now. Maybe tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Once I'm gone and everybody who knew by dies too, it will be as if I never existed. What in the world is better because of me? None, that I can think of..." Basically, Warren came to feel that like he had not made a difference in anyone's life and that he had nothing to show for himself. That's why I think that when he read the letter from the nun and saw the drawing from Indugu, it showed him that he actually did make a difference in someone's life.
Always been conflicted about this. Jack Nicholson was terrific in that last minute, but it did feel like a screenplay cop out. The film was so impressively uncompromising when it came to the rift remaining between father and daughter, that I expected something less obvious at the end.
I think it only seems like this ending scene is "a screenplay copout" or "dumbing it down for the audience", if you take the viewpoint that the scene was for the audience. Of course it was obvious to us that he made a difference in the kid's life, but the point was that he didn't know that until receiving the letter. Otherwise the movie would have ended with Schmidt actually convinced that he had never meant anything to anyone, and that would have been very sad.
I really don't see the ending as corny or a cop out at all. Sure, if it had just ended with him talking about how useless and miserable he was, the audience could say "but wait, he made a difference to the orphaned little african boy," but isn't the whole point that HE learns this? How are we supposed to see him come to terms with the idea that maybe his life wasn't all that meaningless if the movie ends with him just moping around his house?
It teeters on over-sentimentality, I will give you that. But I thought it was done very well, and to simply decide that its only purpose was to dumb the story down or oversimplify is just cynical.
Well, for me, it's precisely the last minute of the film which saved it in my opinion. Without it, About Schmidt would have been the most depressingly, hopelessly accurate depiction of a world that truly exists. It's the world of void, cheapness, cretinism, alienation and morally *beep* up dysfunctional families that try to convince themselves that they live for something great, although it's only an illusion. The woman depicted by Bates, a sort of matriarchal tyrant who thrives by despising those who have little choice but enduring her cruelty and self-indulgence.
The letter Schmidt receives and reads at the end is precisely what saves him from total despair and the impression of total failure of his own life that had been exacerbated by the ordeal of going to his daughter's wedding and facing the living hell of his new family-in-law....
Without that scene, the movie would have been terribly, horribly depressing. It's not cheesy, rather on the contrary: it infuses a liberating and salutary dose of humanity and light in this portrait of people whose life feels pointless...
Obviously, you and I saw very different things in that movie !
It all depends on how you see the movie, and the meaning of it all. The movie is called "About Schmidt".
Schmidt has many opportunities throughout the film to make relationships that are practically thrown his way, but he rejects every single one of them.
He kisses the woman he just met whom he felt could truly understand him, he runs away at the touch of the mother-in-law in the jacuzzi, he avoids all interaction at the family gathering by being completely drugged up. He talks and talks about how much he loves his daughter, yet he makes no effort to ever try and understand/get to know her as a father should. Schmidt is selfish.
The only person who he truly opens up to in the film, and the only person to whom he exhibits generosity, is the boy Ndugu. He is rewarded with a very simple, yet very vital and symbolic picture: a picture of human relationship.
He realizes, at the very end of his life, how selfish he has been and how easy it is or could have been to find the 'happiness' and 'feeling of accomplishment' he has been striving to find all throughout the film. He realizes, that it is through simple human relationships that one truly finds meaning in life, and this causes him to break down in a beautifully simple yet mastered final scene.
About Schmidt is all about Schmidt.
I think the morale of this story goes beyond Schmidt and is an implication to the human selfishness in society today. We are so consumed with career, ourselves and our own silly ambitions, that we are too selfish to escape the bubble that society constrains upon us. All life needs is a little bit of generosity, and what will be returned is something far more fulfilling and lovely then anything that can be "achieved"...
I think you summed it up quite well, KnowledgeIsLife, except that I think Schmidt has not been selfish, in fact selfless by giving up his life for work to support his family, and now he feels his life is over and what has he accomplished? The ending is absolutely perfect, because it symbolizes that he actually has accomplished something, in a small way, profound, and he breaks down with emotion. I think it also has something to do with the fact that now, at the end of his life, he has the time for a child and he did not when his daughter was younger, etc. I LOVED the last minute--it gets me every time.
Schmidt is selfish because he never once shows any sense of friendliness. He is too high and mighty to ever 'lower' himself to open up and show his true colors to people he believes are lower than him.
The movie is all about relationships, and not about work and the more trivial materialistic gains that he is still stingy/cheap with in his old age. The reason we garner a sense of sympathy for Schmidt is not because of his exuberant character, but rather because he is the 'hero' of this film. However, he is more an anti-hero than a hero, displaying all the qualities of what is not expected in a human being we would want to look up to. This is the beauty of this film. It tells the truth, in a blatant, yet alluring and charming way.
Throughout the film, we can relate greatly to Schmidt and his judgmental state of mind, because we see something of ourselves in him. The story and the writer are thus implying to something that lies within all of us, a selfishness that is exacerbated by our own egoism, a feeling we all garner within us that we are somehow better than certain people. Schmidt is an exemplary human image of this.
"He has the time for a child and he did not when his daughter was younger"... yet even when retired he still fails at closing the gap between him and his daughter.
He isn't not there for his daughter because he is selfless and working too hard, he's not there for his daughter because he simply never cared to reach a level of human understanding that most fathers/daughters should have between each other. He fails at maintaining a relationship with his daughter, while his wife was always able to (his daughter talks about how she would talk with her mother everyday, while Schmidt remains clueless about the wedding). The wedding is never a highlighted event or theme throughout the movie, even though it should be as the movie is seen through Schmidt's point of view and as a father we would expect this event to be very important for him.
No, instead the movie is all about Schmidt. Never once does he center his attention on anyone but himself, except at the end, where he finally realizes how much he has failed, and thus he breaks down in what seems to be a melee between tears and a smile, which is what we, as spectators and people who all have a small part of Schmidt in them, should experience as well.
I appreciate your comment, but my grandmother, mother and I worked all our lives, and no, there is not enough time to spend with children--yes, he he has time now, but it is too late. I agree, he could have tried harder, but in my experience, and many people I know, there just aren't enough hours in the day. Also, the wedding may not have been important to him because he genuinely feels his daughter is making a mistake. (Which I agree--I give it two years--ha, ha.) I'd like to think that after her divorce, she comes to live with her father, with maybe a grandchild, and he's extremely happy. There should be a sequel. (BTW, those tears and a smile are Jack Nicholson's trademark--I don'tknow if he can cry without seeming to smile).
There should be a sequel? You're completely misunderstanding the meaning of this movie if you think there 'should be a sequel'. This movie is derived from a book. This has nothing to do with how hard he worked when he was younger. There is no emphasis on this at all throughout the movie. Emphasis lies on his inability to create, establish and maintain loving relationships with the people around him. Every single relationship he's ever had has been tainted either by himself or the things and people around him. His best friend was the one his wife was cheating with, he had become perpetually annoyed with his wife, his daughter remains cautious of her father because of how uncaring and irresponsible he is when it comes to displaying true fatherhood. He has time now, and throughout the movie he STILL failed miserably at creating any new relationships or mending any of his previous ones. The ONLY relationship he managed to gain, and the one that thus led to his EPIPHANY, was the one with the boy Ndugu. He cries because he realizes how easy it is to find the true answers he has been looking for by simply being selfless. The small act of donating $22 led him to create something much more valuable then that $22 or any sum of money/materialistic gain...
Those tears with a smile are not trademarks of Jack Nicholson. I've seen him in several other films where he simply cries with no hint of happiness. The smile is imprinted on his face to show the ambiguity behind his emotions, that there is both a happiness and a sadness in what he is feeling: a happiness that he has finally achieved something of importance in his life by helping this young boy, but also a sadness that he has not achieved enough because he has been too selfish to ever realise how self-indulgent he truly was.
Schmidt had 1 child, a wife, and a middle-class job; Schmidt is a very translatable protagonist in that sense. Why, then, does he fail so miserably at finding true happiness and love? Perhaps the fact that Schmidt is so 'normal' relates to how we are all lost somewhat in finding true happiness and love. Perhaps, then, in studying Schmidt we can better understand ourselves.
Although you make some valid points, I can venture a guess that you have not worked at the same job for 30+ years. This is my whole point, and the point of the movie, no emphasis HAS to be made about how working hard your whole life does to a person. This is a GIVEN. In order to cope, to survive, it affects your ability to create, establish, and maintain loving relationships with the people around you. No one would understand this unless you've been through it. You work your whole life, and spend almost 1/3 of your adult life without your family. This creates a sort of "robot mentality," (especially if it is not a creative job), which you obviously don't understand. I've never seen Nicholson as you said--can you give examples? The fact that Schmidt fails so miserably at finding true happiness and love is the obvious answer--he has not had the time. This is the tragedy of the American Dream, which is what this movie is about--give him time--at the end he is beginning! That is why I mentioned a sequel--there is no need to insult others opinions.
You know it really annoys me when people try & tell others that they are wrong about their interpretation of a character or film. The way I see it we can all see these things differently & none of us are wrong. We are all entitled to our own opinions & we can take whatever we want from a film because we all have different opinions & life experience. I agree with some of what you said, but not all, however this doesn't mean that you are right, or that you have the right to call others wrong.
Most movies do have messages they try to get across. That's what people are debating. If you'd ask the screenwriters you'd get a straight answer. That straight answer is what people are trying to figure out. So in the end when all is said and done it's not so much about opinion after all, but about the right interpretation that ties all the clues in the movie together ;) but it's not a competition! :D it's a team effort.
KnowledgeIsLife wrote: "There should be a sequel? You're completely misunderstanding the meaning of this movie if you think there 'should be a sequel'. This movie is derived from a book. "
A lot of what you say makes sense, but I think that Schmidt isn't so much deliberately rejecting the chances to make relationships -- he just isn't capable of doing so.