Schmidt is an exemplar of American middle class virtue. When he retires, his many friends and colleagues gather to wish him a fond farewell. A successful VP of actuarial science in a large Omaha Nebraska corporation, his golden years before him, he looks forward to a life of adventure in his new Winnebago. At first, the process of defining himself without reference to his career is predictably tough; but then, when his wife dies, he's forced to look at himself without any of the socially constructed icons that he's used as a crutch for over forty years.
Like Jack Kerouac, he goes searching for himself on the road. And mad Captain Ahab on the maiden voyage of his Winnebago has no shortage of lunatic first mates to offer their advice always wrong, always genuine American kitsch. The situations in which Schmidt finds himself are darkly comical.
About Schmidt is a film devoted to the problem of kitsch, particularly its emotional and intellectual manifestations. There's kitsch on the left, and kitsch on the right. There's an economy based on its production, and an economy based on its avoidance. And this film finds kitsch everywhere, in modern evangelical churches, in New Age practitioners of lovey-dovey touchy-feely instant familiarity, in the mobile home parks along the road to the American Dream, in the `Precious Moments' figurines that are so nice; worthless, but nice.
I came away from the film thinking of Schmidt as an American Ulysses, of sorts, a hero forced to negate everything he'd learned to value in order to overcome the curse of kitsch. In the end, he succeeds.
Like Jack Kerouac, he goes searching for himself on the road. And mad Captain Ahab on the maiden voyage of his Winnebago has no shortage of lunatic first mates to offer their advice always wrong, always genuine American kitsch. The situations in which Schmidt finds himself are darkly comical.
About Schmidt is a film devoted to the problem of kitsch, particularly its emotional and intellectual manifestations. There's kitsch on the left, and kitsch on the right. There's an economy based on its production, and an economy based on its avoidance. And this film finds kitsch everywhere, in modern evangelical churches, in New Age practitioners of lovey-dovey touchy-feely instant familiarity, in the mobile home parks along the road to the American Dream, in the `Precious Moments' figurines that are so nice; worthless, but nice.
I came away from the film thinking of Schmidt as an American Ulysses, of sorts, a hero forced to negate everything he'd learned to value in order to overcome the curse of kitsch. In the end, he succeeds.