Only a few weeks ago, I wrote that all great movies must do something original. Indeed, this year’s best films have done just that. “Minority Report” was a creative thriller about the future, where criminals are arrested before they commit their crimes. “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” creates a spectacle and a battle greater in scope that any other film has ever attempted.

And now, in a completely different direction is “About Schmidt.” It is on the short list of 2002’s greatest films, and is original not due to its excesses but its restraint. It is brilliant exactly because it does not force an action or an emotion, unwilling to give in to traditional Hollywood clichés.

“About Schmidt” follows a character all too real in the American mainstream. His name is Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson), and he is introduced to the audience on his last day of work at an insurance agency. In silence, he watches his clock tick to five, then turns off the light and leaves his career forever.

He has little else in his life. He has a wife whom he rarely speaks to, and it appears they have reached that stage where they are together not out of love but habit. He has a daughter who is too busy planning her wedding to a rather dull man to pay her parents much attention. He has a good friend, but one that is not as loyal as Schmidt believes.

Writer and director Alexander Payne does not make Schmidt as depressing as this description may indicate. Rather, Schmidt represents America’s decent, hard-working mainstream that few artists have ever found interesting enough to make a movie about. Schmidt does his job, has raised a good family, has treated his wife well, and should now be celebrating the fruits of his labors.

But with the realization that something is missing, “About Schmidt” becomes a film that transcends this simple story. Underneath his surface treasures, Schmidt’s ambition has been stripped away. The years have beat him down, have reduced him to little more than a small cog in the greater social machine, and he yearns for some aspect of that human spirit that was stolen while he was too busy to notice.

It is only after a few surprises uproot Schmidt’s so-called perfect life and make him realize that a lifetime of compromises have shattered his inner spirit that he decides to recapture what has been taken from him. He hits the road, sights set on preventing his daughter from settling for a life less than what she deserves.

Many critics have inaccurately labeled “About Schmidt” a comedy or a modern tragedy. I must admit that I did not laugh or cry much. What I did do was think. I thought about my life, my parents, my friends, and about the complex balance of being a responsible adult in this society without losing the dreams and passions that keep our hearts beating.

At the film’s center is Jack Nicholson, playing a character unlike anything we have seen before. Schmidt is at once cheerful, scared and determined, not a simple character to dissect but one so real in his confusion and his fear that we hope for his success with the belief that we too could find a similar path to self-discovery.

“About Schmidt,” however, does not make Schmidt’s journey that transparent. There are no revelations or triumphant changes of heart. Instead, the film seems even more genuine as we realize Schmidt cannot easily break free from the realities of society. He is confined and limited by what others expect of him and he is too decent of a man to turn his back on everything he has attained.

The film’s ending is not entirely happy. It takes the good with bad, suggesting that Schmidt cannot make his dark world bright again, but also exposing a small glimmer of hope that, if we try hard enough, we can make our own, small difference. Payne, in both “Schmidt” and his earlier film “Election,” has a gift of injecting profound meaning into such quiet, honest and humane moments.

I had one reaction that might make this film’s message a bit clearer. As Schmidt returns from a retirement dinner early in the film, he gets on the phone with his daughter who didn’t make the trip to celebrate with her father. This simple scene caused me to burst into tears. Here is a sad, joyless and empty man playing happy for those around him. And I believe there are more Schmidts in this world than we would like to admit.

The journey in “About Schmidt” is not about highways or miles, but about Schmidt finding the key to some level of inner peace; when he can finally smile, and mean it.

by: Steven Snyder steven@zertinet.com, Published 2002-09-27