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“Silver Screenings”

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"It Seems to Me....."
by
Steve H Kehoe

1968 was a pivotal year in so many ways. I and most of my classmates of the Class of '62 had long sense scooted off to Kirksville, or Columbia, or St. Louis to complete our degrees-many to continue our student deferments, avoiding the massive bloodshed in the "Domino War". Massive changes were occurring in history. The war in Southeast Asia had entered a horrifying new phase, a result of the Viet Cong's Tet offensive, leading the majority of thinking Americans, most notably Walter Cronkite, to believe the war could not be won. American hopefulness and optimism began to take a back seat to pessimism, which was as palpable as the touch of a cold knife blade on tender flesh; the mood of the whole country was changing, and a plethora of movies were made, which is not in itself historic; What was historic is that so many good movies were made that year, mostly reflecting the new dark mood of the country. Topping that great list was, of course, "The Graduate", which starred Anne Bancroft and featuring the debut of Dustin Hoffman. While this movie portrayed poignantly the plight of the "generation gap", with all the student angst one could stand, another class of surrealism surfaced in the making of "The Swimmer", starring Burt Lancaster, which quickly became the sine qua non of its genre. Adapted very artfully from the 1964 novelette by John Cheever, this was one of the darkest films to come out of that painful era of the late 60's, when fancy mixed so often with reality that both were occluded, as when life itself fought for interpretation. The brilliant usage of clouded forest imagery, along with diffused light, was itself light-years ahead of its time, and properly set the tone for the whole epic.
It begins with Ned "Neddy" Merrill, portrayed de facto as a previously successful executive, clad only in a pair of blue swimming trunks, running through the woods in an exclusive neighborhood in upstate Connecticut. He comes to a friend's swimming pool and dives in. As he exits, he is welcomed by the owners, who claim it was good to see him again, and to whom he reveals his plan: By stopping and swimming in each of his neighbors' pools along a two mile course, he plans to "swim his way home". We don't know at this point how he got to where he began, but that only becomes important the more the story unravels. At first he is greeted warmly, with promises of "we'll have to get together, real soon", as he makes his way from one home (and pool) to another. Gradually we are "let in" on some of the details: he has been gone from the area for several years, under apparently strange circumstances. Hints of his financial ruin emerge, such as filing bankruptcy and stiffing several of these very same neighbors for various amounts of money, and asking some of his neighbors for petty cash on which to live after his precipitous downfall. He becomes a living metaphor for the condition of the country in 1968-rent asunder by events over which he has no control, and only imperfect memory! The frequent blurry scenes makes skillful use of the surrealistic underpinning of the movie-allowing the viewer latitude to gradually believe that there is much more than meets the eye at work here. The cinema begins to take on a sort of "dream aura" as the viewer is drawn deeper and deeper in to the mysterious and unforgiving story arc.
At one of his first stops, he meets a young girl of 20, who used to be the family babysitter. She agrees to go with him on his quest to "swim home", out of admiration for his picaresque plan. This gives the audience some idea of how long he has been absent from his neighborhood. Along the way, she reveals to him how she used to have an adolescent crush on him, which leads him eventually to attempt a romantic gesture, causing her to flee from both his suddenly-threatening presence, and his adventurous plan. With each neighbor he meets as he swims their pools enroute to his own home, the hostility toward "Neddy" increases, as bits of his past slowly crystallize for the viewer. Once beloved, he had fallen on hard financial and domestic times; though he continually boasts about his wife Lucinda and their two daughters, it becomes obvious that they have left his life, though the question of who left whom is left up for individual interpretation.
At his next-to-final stop, he encounters a bitter ex-mistress who shows much anger yet still carries a spark of caring for him, but she fends him off and runs back into her home.
Neddy then meets hostile and angry shopkeepers at the public swimming pool, and, lacking the fifty cent admission, he has to humiliate himself by borrowing the sum from a reluctant yet still somewhat admiring youth, as the youth's wife spews forth a stream of hateful invectives which wound Neddy's pride even more.
Eventually he does reach his home, in a driving thunderstorm by now; the sudden change in the weather, now turned cold and rainy, is a metaphor for his condition: outcast, shamed by everyone he meets, and scorned by nearly everyone whom he has wronged in some way. I'll not reveal the ending, but suffice to say it is poignant enough in and of itself to pop for the Netflix price to rent and play it. This one, with all its inherent weirdness, I'll give a full 9.0 out of ten. If it were conceived in any other decade than the 60's, I doubt if it would even bear a mention from anyone. But it is, like "The Graduate", and for very different reasons, the perfect "period piece"! The ghosts of the late 60's are in many ways still with us, and one wonders if we will ever be free of them.
Steve H Kehoe, Namaste!
Random Thoughts-Things worth pondering, if only for a little while:
The Alligator is the only animal that cannot stick its tongue out (so what?)
No one knows for sure the origin of the word "Pussycat".
Why do we go to bed at night, when we just have to get up the next morning?
Nothing sucks more than that moment in an argument when you realize you are wrong.
I take back all those years when I was younger, and fought the idea of taking naps!
How do you fold a fitted sheet?
How do you know when to dial "1" for a long-distance call?
Where do people in Hawaii and Florida go on vacation? Iowa?
Don't you wonder now how much time was wasted learning to write "cursive"?
The time gets longer each day when you realize you aren't gonna accomplish anything.
Why is it we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?
Let's all agree that, after Blu-Ray, we refuse to buy the next level of technology!
I know a man whose wife treated him like a Greek god; he got meals of burnt offerings.
I disagree with Kay Jewelers; most kisses begin with a Bud Light.
I wonder if Angels believe in Humans?
It doesn't take a village to raise a child; it takes two committed, PRESENT parents!
On Nytol sleep aid bottle: "May cause drowsiness". DUH!
Ketchup was sold in the 1800's as medicine.
During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur" a small red car can be seen in the background!
I live in my own little world, but that's OK. People know me there!