The Swimmer

Judging by the comments here, apparently I'm not the only one who was incredibly moved by this masterpiece--a masterpiece of storytelling on Cheever's part, that is, and a more than passable film portrayal of what one might call "the perfect short story." If HBO had existed in the 1960s, and Rod Serling had written for it, this is what "Twilight Zone" might have looked like: a tangled, twisted terrain of the human psyche that leads to the deepest of our fears--and the most profound of our hopes. The stakes for Ned Merrill, as we come to discover, are about as high as they can be for any character not caught in a literal life and death struggle. But he might as well be, judging by the size and fearsomeness of the phantoms that haunt his way. For this reason I think I'd say that other than *Glengarry Glen Ross,* this is the most terrifying film ever made.

In contrast to many others, however, I don't think Ned is delusional: I think he's spent so long believing his own publicity, as it were, that he hasn't fully accepted what has happened to him. (And of course, "what has happened to him" is almost entirely of his own making, which makes his predicament all the more painful because it seems to offer no hope of redemption.) And he's clearly one of those hail-fellow-well-met types who, when he promises he's going to do something for someone--as he continually does in the movie, right up to the point where he promises to pay his bill to a local proprietor--he truly means it, at least in the moment.

Additionally, "The Swimmer" seems like far too profound a work to tie it to themes as dreary and shopworn as the emptiness of suburban life or the dark side of the American dream. Granted, a great deal of powerful literature, dating back at least to Nathanael West's *Day of the Locust*, has been written around the second of these ideas, but "The Swimmer" seems to speak to something much deeper, a haunted place in the human soul. In the ads for the movie--which, in sharp contrast to the brilliant development of the story itself, attempted to lay out all the details in a way at once pedantic and almost pandering (as previews in those days tended to be), a voice-over asks if the viewer might see Ned in him- or herself.

*The Swimmer* is an epic, but an unusual one. Not because of the small scale and the deceptively trivial-seeming stakes involved it the epic journey--that's an idea Joyce introduced years earlier in *Ulysses*--but because of that journey's destination. Ned isn't going toward a new land, but back--back to nothing short of Eden. And if it's an epic, then he's a hero of sorts, and not entirely an antihero either. After all, even with all the things you learn about him along the way, it's hard not to root for Ned Merrill.

A man beyond middle-age living in tony, upscale Connecticut environs decides to swim home from one neighbors' swimming pool to another, drinking cocktails all along the way, engaging in friendly, empty banter and confronting all the demons of his life -- most of his own making. This is a late '60s experiment (and, thankfully, they were more experimental in the main in the '60s than today) that takes an exceptional short story by the uniquely American master teller of modern tales, John Cheever, and expands it into a character piece for the wonderful Burt Lancaster. Here he's playing an ordinary business executive stuck in an early '60s, three martini lunch time warp, a Viet Nam era/Hippie-Nation prevailed-upon Upper West side would-be master of the universe. A man who is strangely out of place and out of time and will suffer a fate, maybe cruel, maybe just, but one that he is entirely complicit in despite any protest. This is engagingly dark stuff told under the glare of a late summer bright sunny sky. The film's flaws are bound to its era of production -- auto-camera zooms and sunlight flares and delirious music montages -- but they mean little compared to the hyper-sophisticated smarts of its dialogue and the performances, obviously from Lancaster, but also the unique variety of women he encounters from his past before arriving at his horrible present. "It's a beautiful day! Look at that sky, look at that blue water!"

I saw this movie in 1968 when it came out, and have never been able to forget it. I never found anyone who had ever heard of it--a shame. It's my favorite Burt Lancaster performance: I can't imagine anyone else doing the role justice.

When Neddy is ready to leave the garden cocktail party he has been invited to, he looks out across the valley and sees the row of pools, all belonging to his neighbors. He's obviously a poet, and sees the chain of pools as a river (Metaphor). He decides to swim back home. Little does he, or we, know at this point what going home means! He goes from house to house, he greets his friends and jumps into their pools. We become a little worried as things seem to get a little out of hand--a little more so at each house. It's not long before we realize that this "river" is (Meta-Metaphor!) a trip through time, through his life--and that he has made one fine mess of it. The ending is amazing, and almost unbearable.

Frank Perry's screen adaptation of the achingly sad John Cheever short story gets the tone of Cheever's story just right, even if the movie itself doesn't have quite the same impact.

There have been countless strong and powerful films made around the theme of suburban loneliness, and this movie belongs to that genre. There's something so poignant about the idea that someone can exist in a world that's manufactured for the sole purpose of providing its inhabitants with luxury, pleasure and convenience, and still be miserable. You'd think people would have gotten the point by now, and figured out that privilege, wealth and materialism have virtually nothing to do with ultimate happiness, but if our own consumerist culture is any indication, they haven't.

What helps "The Swimmer" to stand out from other similarly-themed films is the way the story is told. It's only through the reactions of others that we begin to sense what's wrong with Burt Lancaster's character. To us, he looks the picture of middle-aged robustness and health. Lancaster became a much better actor as he aged, and he gives a wonderful performance here, as his bravado and macho virility (the strutting and preening of a man on top of the world) slowly dissolves into a lost insecurity, until the film's final devastating moments leave him as forlorn as a baby.

What a sad, sad movie.

Grade: A-

I still have dreams where I'm at summer camp; 10 years old and running through the woods. The sun barely breaks through the thick forest canopy. There is no way for me to recapture that feeling in my adult life. No backpacking trip in a national park or well-planned vacation to an unspoiled beach can provide it. This is the problem of privilege: What seems to be a gift is really a loan. We spend the rest of our lives paying back this debt. This movie is fantastic. Burt Lancaster is the man. If you are a film fan and an American and you have not yet seen this film, then be careful! Save this one for a rainy day because you won't find many more like it. It's about living in the past, in a dream of what the present should be. It's about a privileged, womanizing, self-obsessed middle aged man who comes up with a plan to swim home that is clear only to him. "Why would you want to do that?", people keep asking him. Watch this movie alone and then don't talk to anyone about it. Keep it secret. Let it fuel you.