2003 Talk About Movies
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Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

TALK ABOUT MOVIES
December 2003

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Directed by Alexander Payne. Starring Jack Nicholson, Hope Davis. 125 minutes, Color, English. Available at Hollywood Video.

Matthew: His friend's speech about how what matters is loving friends and family and building a good life is platitudinous, but it's true, and Schmidt's depressed that he hasn't done that. Ernie: He can't even recognize what was good in his marriage before his wife died. His sort of solid, Omaha upbringing makes him look like a tower of sanity among all the wackos in Denver at the wedding, so it's shown to be worth something. Matthew: He can't stand the man his daughter is marrying, but he lays himself down for her. Ernie: But that decency is also shown to have slipped into nothing greater than habit, so he can't see the value of it. And the risk is that if you're doing the basic, decent things, you feel like a basic, decent person. There should be more to it than that, some other acts. Matthew: The first moment of grace comes when he's surfing through daytime TV, and he flips back to the infomercial about starving children.

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Ernie: The missionary nun who wrote him the letter could see that what he was doing for Ndugu -- checkbook self-donation, and writing letters about himself -- was somehow akin to what she was doing with her entire life.