Rabugentos & Mentirosos

A couple of old codgers who were playing slightly beyond their actual ages make I'm Not Rappaport a really delightful film, especially for us senior citizens who can now identify with it. I couldn't much when the movie came out or Herb Gardiner's play ran on Broadway from 1985 to 1988 for 891 performances. Judd Hirsch and Cleavon Little played the roles on Broadway that Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis do in the film.

There's a nice free flowing chemistry between Matthau and Davis. Matthau was literally born to play this role given his Lower East Side upbringing with family of the same general background as his Nat Moyer.

Matthau's discovered that the elderly can get away with just about anything and maybe helped by a bit of dementia he spins the kind of yarns that in old Hollywood westerns might have made him a Yiddishe sidekick. He's an old leftist from back in the 30s when it was most respectable. Bernie Sanders would have gotten this guy.

Davis has lived for 40 years as a building superintendent in a Fifth Avenue and the building is going co-op and he's about to be let go. Davis likes Matthau in his own way, but hasn't quite gotten the hang of laying it on the way Matthau does. See the two of them, especially Matthau take on the co-op president Boyd Gaines.

The play only had the one setting of the park bench in Central Park where these two commiserate. But with Herb Gardner adapting his own play, the beautiful fall vistas of Central Park makes the park itself a character in the film.

But you really have to see how Matthau and Davis play off against each other so well. That's what puts them in the seats and now renting the film on Netflicks.

Though I have worked in almost all aspects of the theater business, I do not agree with many of my colleagues when it comes to film tastes. I do not like film adaptations of stage plays because the origins are most of the times in evidence, but that seems to be what my friends enjoy more: to be remembered that they watch filmed theater. But this one (winner of New York's Tony award) I liked quite a lot, although it is also the case: in spite of the efforts to emphasize its outdoors setting, it is based on word interchange, and most of the action is verbal and static, depending mostly on criss-cross editing. This time though you have two exceptional actors, with the additional plus that they are not of the kind that goes around with a sign on his/her face or chest that reads "I'm the Greatest Actor" (and I can think of quite a few). You don't find plays everyday in which the main characters are a Jewish militant of the Left and a black janitor, both very old. These people are not glamorous, their lives were not full of heroics, and old age is not epic, but one spends a good time with these two folks, even if a couple of subplots could have been omitted. Perhaps, due to the fact that Herb Gardner the playwright adapted his work and also directed it, the film is overlong. But one day when you are not in a rush, and have time for Matthau and Davis, enjoy them. It is better than watching aimless young Germans in Portugal for two hours, in something called "Body Rice"...

In I'm Not Rappaport, a film by Herb Gardner based on his Tony award winning play, two octogenarians Nat (Walter Matthau) and Midge (Ossie Davis) meet regularly on a park bench in New York's Central Park. The film centers on their relationship as they reminisce about past loves, talk about unions and bosses, old age, and idealism. Nat is a chameleon who assumes the role of spy, lawyer, or consumer advocate, depending on the situation at hand. `I was one person for 80 something years,' he says. `Why not be a hundred for the next five?' Midge, now nearly blind, has worked as a building superintendent for forty years and has had to make compromises just to keep his job.

The film takes its title from the old vaudeville joke in which a comic walks across the stage and encounters a straight man with surprise: `Rappaport! What happened to you?' he says. `You used to be a short, fat man and now you're a tall, skinny man.' `I'm not Rappaport,' says the straight man. And this goes on for a couple of minutes until the comic says, `Rappaport, you used to be so well dressed and clean and now you're dressed in filthy old clothes.' `I'm not Rappaport,' says the straight man. `So you changed your name too!' says the comic.

Nat's most vivid remembrance is that of a meeting when he was five years old in which a passionate woman, Clara Lemlich (Elina Lowensohn), summoned the Ladies Garment Workers Union to participate in a general strike. He is a follower of radical left-wing causes who focuses his remaining energy and considerable wit on helping others facing injustice. Midge doesn't want any part of social activism but, when the spokesman for the tenant's committee threatens to eliminate his job and apartment dwelling, Nat pretends that he is Midge's lawyer and intervenes, making clear that the issue is a society that underestimates and mistreats its senior citizens. In another sequence, Nat pretends he is a consumer spokesman and brazenly marks down the price of meats and groceries in the local supermarket until he is thrown out on his ear.

Things take on a darker tone, however, when a local hood, J.C. (Guermo Diaz) seeks protection money from the elderly. The pair also becomes involved with drug dealer "Cowboy" (Craig T. Nelson) who threatens street artist Laurie (Martha Plimpton) with physical harm if she doesn't pay him the money she owes for drugs. These two episodes are the least effective in the film and do not add much to our understanding of the characters. The most touching sequence, however, is when Nat's schemes are revealed as a desperate attempt to maintain his independence from his daughter Clara (Amy Irving) who wants greater control over his life. While his activities seem harmless, Clara is fearful of her father's visits to the park and wants him to live with her or in a managed care facility. "I'm not going to live in Siberia in Great Neck" with her, he tells her, then makes up a story about a long-forgotten daughter who has invited him to live with her in Israel.

While ostensibly I'm Not Rappaport is essentially a two-man show, in reality Matthau grabs the spotlight and never lets go, reducing Davis' role to film fighting off Nat's outlandish talks and schemes and playing straight man for his comic routines. While the film is a comedy, there is sadness in the fact that a once powerful set of beliefs is now reduced to pathetic gestures by sentimental old men. Even when Gardner pays tribute to the Jewish tradition of social action, the Bolshoi Chorus belting out the Internationale seems to mock their passion. For these men, old age does not bring security, status, or emotional fulfillment, only longing for the society that might have been and the men they could have become. For them, there is little left to cling to except a wistful kind of grace.

A sensitive approach to the "getting old" problem on the big cities. The main character is a modern version of Dom Quixote, who tries to keep his ideas and principles alive assuming to be imaginary people which had more interesting histories than he had on his own life.

The movie is beautiful and amusing. Walter Matthau is splendid.

What a great movie! With a great script, a pair of huge actors, and a beautiful scenery, this movie can touch anyone's heart. Don't miss it!