Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Gave myself the weekend project of reading Louis Begley's About Schmidt and then viewing Alexander Payne's film of the book. The film was a rewarding Saturday night diversion, but Begley's prose is of such a luminous quality that the reading will be prolonged for some days to come, which is not to say that the one work is superior to the other. Different media, differing interpretations, that's all.

First, the book. Gracefully stylish and comically touching, Begley's account of the unravelling life of Albert Schmidt is hypnotic in the telling. Schmidt represents a type of East Coast propriety that's being swept away by coarseness and naked ambition. Here's a man who enjoys a cigar, knows his wine and takes pleasure in reading belles lettres. By way of contrast, Schmidt's only child, Charlotte, is planning to marry a man whose idea of relaxation is to write work memos on his laptop computer. And, to make matters worse, he's a Jew.

Schmidt's world is falling apart because his beloved wife has died and he feels that the remaining useful life of his overcoats is longer than his own. He's also beginning to doubt the value of such "cycles of maintenance" as daily shaves and monthly haircuts. Still, he's got a few consolations, including his diary, the keeping of which began as an order from his father.

"A man is responsible for what he does with his time, he said. Unless you get it down it will be lost?"

Alone in the house after Mary died, he found that keeping a diary was also a pleasant pastime that cost nothing, a more dignified way of breaking the oppressive silence that surrounded him than talking to himself. He became quite diligent. And, to the extent that any of us understand the forces by which we are buffeted, what he wrote down at that time was far from inaccurate."

IN ALEXANDER PAYNE'S FILM "About Schmidt", Louis Begley's East Coast lawyer is transformed into Warren Schmidt, a retired, insurance executive living in Omaha. Of all the mutations Jack Nicholson has undergone in his acting career, none is more remarkable than his portrayal of this American everyman who finds himself retired, alone and lonely at the age of 66. Schmidt, who has spent his working life calculating the life spans of others, views his remaining years with disappointment. He feels that he has made no difference to the world.

This existential crisis is exacerbated by the sudden death of his wife, Helen (June Squibb). Earlier in the film Warren confesses in a voice-over to a secret loathing of this thickening, gray-haired woman he has lived with for 42 years, but with Helen gone, he's unable to cook or tidy the house. After a few weeks of living in squalor, he escapes Omaha in the huge Winnebago motor home he and his wife had planned to travel in once he retired. As Warren speeds from Nebraska to Kansas on a journey that eventually takes him to Denver to attend the wedding of his daughter, Jeannie (Hope Davis), one is reminded of Nicholson's "Easy Rider" trip 33 years ago. But instead of heading into the future, "About Schmidt" is a pilgrimage into the past.

Instead of falling prey to sentimentality, however, "About Schmidt" becomes a captivating, often hilarious, road movie interspersed with voice-overs in which Warren composes letters to Ndugu, a six-year-old Tanzanian boy he is sponsoring (for $22 a month) in response to a TV ad by an international charity. While all this is going on, Payne brilliantly balances his satirical look at the rituals of the American heartland with a respectful appreciation of their value to the Silent Majority of decent middle-class people who work hard and respect the law.

Can an ordinary person make a difference? That's the question posed by the film. The answer in the final scene is simple and deeply moving. "About Schmidt" is exquisite screen realism.

Diarist of the day: Alan Bennett, 3 March 1983

"I take a version of a script down to Settle to be photocopied. The man in charge o the machine watches the sheets come through. 'Glancing at this,' he says, 'I see you dabble in playwriting.' While this about sums it up, I find myself resenting him for noticing what goes through this machine at all. Photocopying is a job in which one is required to see and not see, the delicacy demanded not different from that in medicine. It's as if a nurse were to say, 'I see watching you undress, that your legs are nothing to write home about."