I watched About Schmidt (2002) today.

I watched it not because I expected it to be a dissident film - no one recommended it to me, especially not on that basis - but rather because I enjoyed the director Alexander Payne's Election (1999) and Sideways (2004), which were both slice of life films with cutting and understated social commentary.

Here Jack Nicholson plays against type - instead of being showy, he mostly sits there feeling dead inside. I appreciated his acting here, as it couldn't have been easy for him given his natural inclinations. Even though the film is billed as a comedy/drama, I felt it was a horror film - to get to retirement age, late 60s, and then to slowly realize you made no impact and you wasted your life not pursuing your calling, just going through the motions until your life was almost over. And I think I felt that horror for myself, too - I'm younger than Schmidt but I wasted decades in a haze of going through the motions, of confusion, not knowing my path and not following it. I don't feel that way at the moment - the reading and work that I'm doing analyzing and trying to understand the world is my calling, a scary and alone calling, and who knows where it will lead. But if the alternative is Jack Nicholson's character in About Schmidt - Jesus, it's not much of a choice at all.

The film itself is pretty boring compared to the other two Payne films I watched, but I will continue watching more of his films (like David Mamet's) because I appreciate their unique perspectives and think they have things to say that are worth pondering.