Tonight I watched a film from my personal collection : "The Swimmer" (1968), starring Burt Lancaster (pronun.) I purchased the dvd about a dozen years ago and I've seen it four times now. It's a very unique film, metaphorical in nature and even surrealistic. I don't think I've ever seen a movie quite like it. The opening scene pans across the wooded countryside of Long Island. We see treetops, birds, small animals, ponds. From out of the woods, a man emerges clad only in blue swim trunks. Though middle aged, he is physically fit with a powerful physique. This is Burt Lancaster of course. He walks directly into an unfenced backyard and dives into a swimming pool. There are people sitting on the deck, the house doesn't belong to Lancaster. It looks like he's snuck up on them and dived in unannounced. But when he pulls himself from the pool, the homeowner and his wife seem to know him. They haven't seen him in a while so they're surprised and eager to catch up.
Where has he been the last two years, they ask. He dodges the question to remark on what a beautiful day it is. "Have you ever seen a sky so blue"? His friends want to talk about old times, but Lancaster is in a state of reverie. As he stands on their pool deck, on a hill overlooking the expanse of the wealthy enclave, he gets an idea. "Look at all those pools"! He ticks off a list of all the neighbors who have pools in their yards. "They all connect with each other, like a river. I know what I'm gonna do", he declares, "I'm gonna use them to swim home". His friends are nursing hangovers and they suspect Burt might be drunk himself, but he isn't. He's just high on life, or so it seems. And now, as he leaves his friends, he is going to walk successively to the backyards of each neighbor, and swim across one pool at a time until he gets home. Along the way, he will encounter more people from his life, but as he swims across every pool in the "river Lucinda" (which he has named after his wife), we learn more about him, and soon it is apparent that something is very wrong. His friends at each stop ask him about the missing two years, which he cannot account for and won't discuss. Instead, he just makes small talk.
At one stop he meets a young woman who was once a babysitter to his girls. She is twenty now, but he only remembers her as an adolescent. "How are your daughters "?, she asks. "Oh, they're fine. They're at home playing tennis", he says. They go for a walk in the woods, and the babysitter confesses to Burt that she once had a crush on him. He is lost in a daydream and thinks she is in love with him. When he makes an advance, she runs away and he is alone again. At the next house he comes across a boy of about eight, sitting beside an empty pool. There is a lot of symbolism in "The Swimmer", but I'll leave you to decipher it for yourself. Lancaster feels protective toward the boy, but really he is drawn to youth, being stuck there himself. He's living a Peter Pan fantasy, in part, but he's also running away from something.
As he continues to swim, the day begins to cloud over. He arrives at a pool on a large estate where a party is taking place. For the first time he finds himself unwelcome. Instead of being greeted with hugs and backslaps, now he is coldly stared down by the residents and their friends. They know him, but unlike the neighbors at the earlier pools, their memories are not so fond. They mention owed money, a drinking problem, his snobby blue-blood wife. Burt is shocked and offended. His sunny expression fades as he stumbles away. When he arrives at the home of the next pool, he is relieved to see a familiar face. It is a former flame, played by the great character actress Janice Rule. Unfortunately, she is not as happy to see Burt as he'd expected. I don't want to tell you too much about this scene, because it reveals much - but not all - of what his troubles may be. He appears to have been a womaniser, but there is something drastically more amiss than that. This is the penultimate scene in the movie. It runs long, about 10-12 minutes, and it's a powerhouse of drama. Janice Rule should've gotten a Supporting Actress nod even though it's her only scene. As she tells Lancaster : "You finally met your match in me". He will leave her pool a broken man, with one last hope for redemption. As he keeps telling everyone, "I'm swimming home". It's an optimistic but haunted mantra.
Though "The Swimmer" has a highly unusual narrative, it close to being what we've come to describe as a Perfect Movie, in that it has a 95 minute running time (i.e. not overlong), and - like Lancaster himself - it has no fat. Every scene leads into the next, and every scene drives the story forward. The first couple of times I saw it, I was unsure about the mystery behind Lancaster's sudden reappearance on the scene. His friends are all surprised to see him, and all mention the missing years. This time as I watched, I paid close attention to every line of dialogue, to see if I could discover anything I'd missed previously. I think I have a clearer picture now, though I suppose there are several ways it could be interpreted. That's another great thing about "The Swimmer" is that it not only holds up to repeat viewings, but you get a little more out of it each time. And no matter how many times you watch it, the ending will never fail to blow you away.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for "The Swimmer", a one-of-a-kind film that is highly recommended. /////
I'm gonna go for a CSUN walk now, and stop by the annual Indian Powwow on the campus quad. Then back to Pearl's, and I'll see you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons and tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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