Enigma de uma Vida

This movie is not for everyone, but everyone I know who's seen it admits that it's one-of-a-kind. Burt Lancaster is flat-out powerful in the lead, as the man who decides one day to swim his way through his neighbors' pools to his home. As he makes his way pool by pool we learn more and more about Burt's real character. A kaleidoscopic study of how we see ourselves, versus how others see us. One of my favorites, please give this movie a shot.

John Cheever's short story of 1964 is his most anthologised and here Eleanor Perry, wife of director Frank, has achieved the feat of expanding its twelve pages into a film of ninety five minutes. Cheever's prose is meticulous of course but the tale itself is relatively uneventful and the participants insubstantial so that plenty of fleshing out of episodes and characters has been required, even to the point of adding a few!

Two of the additions are Julie played by newcomer Janet Lindgard who admits to having had a teenage crush on the Ned Merrill of Burt Lancaster but then repulses his advances. The other is the boy Kevin of Michael Kearney with whom Ned 'swims' the length of an empty pool. It is during this scene that Ned utters the crucial words that provide a key to his character:"if you make believe hard enough that something is true, then it is true for you."

We never discover the nature of Ned's 'misfortune' and what has caused his fall from grace although it is hinted at by various characters throughout his aquatic odyssey across the quasi-subterranean string of swimming pools that lead to his home. In believing that his previously affluent life has not changed is he suffering from the ultimate self-deception or has he had a mental breakdown? It is both fitting and ironic that the grim reality of his situation is brought home to him not in the private pools of his social set but by some distinctly unpleasant people in the public swimming baths.

The most telling encounter is that of Ned and a former lover Shirley Abbott played by Janice Rule. What is the briefest of exchanges in the original story has been developed here into one of the bitterest scenes between male and female on film. Ned approaches her with great optimism but his hopes are soon dashed when she lashes out at him for his selfishness and thoughtlessness which leads to his self-pitying lament "we are all going to die."

Could this be the true meaning of Cheever's story I wonder and is this simply an allegory for the ageing process? At the opening of the story Ned is described by Cheever as resembling 'the last hours of a summer's day.' As his journey progresses his stamina is sapped, he feels chilly and his bones begin to ache. I trust it is not too fanciful to see in this the inevitable decline from glorious summer, through the sere and yellow leaf of autumn to the winter of discontent. Just a theory of course.

What is certain however is that this is one of Mr. Lancaster's finest performances and interesting to learn that prior to making this, not only was he unable to swim, he suffered from aquaphobia!

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 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.

What can you say about the swimmer that hasn't already been said. On reflection you have to feel sorry for Ned Merrill, certainly you can't have any sympathy for any of the characters he meets on his way! If he has suffered some sort of mental breakdown the question is why? This movie was set in the civilized environment of New England, Connecticut to be precise and it highlights the cozy drinks around the swimming pool and lavish dinner party Scean that is part and parcel of American culture.

It's perplexing to me that people would put so much expenditure and effort in putting in a pool something that you can only use in New England for about 5-6 months of the year. (Although in the Bizwangers case they added a sliding roof whereby at least they could use the pool all year round!) However the real reason for a pool in New England is to have your friends around, show off your pool and drink and eat to excess. However you can't be satisfied with that, in addition you have to have a pig roast with professional caterers and bar tenders to boot with a band playing in the back ground, thats real living. Material possessions are not just something to show off but are part of what is required to achieve status, without status in the US you have achieved nothing.

So how did Ned Merrill find himself in this predicament? In a conversation with Julie Ann Hooper he recalls that while on a transatlantic ship down in steerage he saw his wife to be, up in first class, he climbed over the barriers wooed her with his charm and that was the beginning of a whirlwind romance. So Ned Merrill found the inside track to achieve high social status. Next comes the huge wedding no expense spared, the grand house and soon the family. Status is not just 6 figure salary, but the house, the cars, the family, the job, throwing wild parties and being a member of an influential committee that's doing charity work. That's not it, being seen at $10000 plate political fund raisers, being a church deacon and basically rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers in your suburban community is a requirement. At one scene at the Graham's Betty says to her husband "I wish we couldm travel more!" A bemused looking Howard says" why we have everything we want right here? That just sums up the attitude that the whole world evolves around their neighborhood. It epitomizes the culture of contentment and it's world of self importance.

Yet Ned Merills found to his cost that when his wife left him, or threw him out he found that everything else became very imbalanced and just like a house of cards once one falls the rest all comes down. Well you can figure out all of the sordid scenarios in sequence, many reviewers have tried but the bottom line is that your life and status can nose-dive into a downward spiral with marriage and work upheaval i.e. friends suddenly don't return calls, invitations to regular events don't turn up but worse you find that you are tapped of favors from colleagues and employment prospects start to very look bleak.

For people who live in such circles this must be their worst nightmare because you lose one you can lose it all. How do you adjust to such a dramatic change! In Ned Merrills case he became so obsessed in pursuing his American dream and totally absorbed in what he regarded as important that he fell into a state of self-propelling delusion.

Shallow, selfish people who put so much emphasis on status and material possessions as a sign of success find it hard to cope with such misfortunes . Why didn't Neddy just pack his bags and move to the west coast and start again? He can't, partly because of his pride and the fact that he was handed a lot probably makes it all the more harder. But the answer to the question is that he was conditioned to believe in a certain way and that without all of the above he was nothing, and he can't accept it?

All in all Ned Merill made things worse for himself, nothing to fall back on, nothing for a rainy day,no safe deposit box full of gold Krugerrands or cash. He threw everything into his lifestyle took himself too seriously and found very little sympathy from former friends, colleagues and acquaintances when the tide turned! Burt Lancaster was proud of this movie and so he should. His performance is very believable, he exuded confidence, happiness and the American spirit. Interestingly at the beginning of the movie he in no way portrayed a middle aged man on skid row which makes the ending even more disturbing when you see the state of him at the end. It could happen to the best of us, Was this what Cheever was trying to portray?