Nobody’s Fool (1994)
The idea was to take a look at Steve Buscemi’s Interview this morning, but my brothers are currently over for the Holidays and a probing look at celebrity was not on their agenda. I didn’t press too hard though, I’m hoping to take at least one of them to I’m Not There in the coming days. We’ll save the good will for that.
All was forgotten and forgiven anyway when Robert Benton’s Nobody’s Fool was found only about ten minutes in playing on HBO last night. I’ve always loved this film, and remember seeing it and Shallow Grave in the same night as a freshman in high school. I think the Brady Bunch movie was big that weekend, but I was watching Paul Newman’s Sully hobble around Bath County, getting into a series of mildly coming of age adventures with his son (Dylan Walsh), his on again off again boss (Bruce Willis, one of his sharpest little performances), his on again off again landlord (Jessica Tandy) and several others. I fell in love immediately, and, if I recall correctly, this was the first time I looked at Paul Newman and saw him as more than one of my father’s leading men. This was one of my leading men too, this is one of OUR leading men, a man of rare, deep, but unsentimental humanity.
Of course, there’s a bit of fantasy to be indulged in here, there was in the Richard Russo novel too. We all wish we could be as charming about not fulfilling life’s obligations and fantasies as Newman’s Sully. The performance and the film idealize this a little, the idea of not having a job, being totally free, and shambling from one little episode to the next. Benton, along with Russo, who helped him on the script, don’t totally bail out though, the tug between the idealized and the raw is what lends the film a slightly topsy turvy, loopy power, you’re laughing and then a moment later you realize that wasn’t so funny. The Dylan Walsh character, who isn’t half as charismatic as the dad who abandoned him (Walsh knows this, and that makes it all the worse), continually blindsides Sully, and us, with references to his wrongdoing. Sully doesn’t usually reply, and that’s part of the charm, he never evades his sentence, he’s cast himself as the no good absentee father, and he’s determined to see the part through and not rob his son of the hatred he’s entitled to have.
Why aren’t there more films like Nobody’s Fool? Films that toss the three act structure aside and simply BE. Sideways is such a film. So is Wonder Boys. Nobody’s Fool is one of those films that’s so generous of spirit that you put away your critic’s cap and forgive it of its flaws, of which there are admittedly a few. Robert Benton (who directed Kramer vs. Kramer as well as co-writing Bonnie and Clyde for Pete’s sake) sometimes doesn’t quite trust us to be sufficiently moved, he applies the music a little too liberally in places. Things occassionally fit in their coming of age slot a little too neatly, the characters should be a little messier.
But these are minor issues. Sully is, along with Fast Eddie, Hud, and a few others, one of Paul Newman’s greatest creations. Benton also, refreshingly, gets small towns, understands how they can be suffocating and comforting in the same measure. Benton gets the pleasures of knowing everyone who eats in the cafe for breakfast, or the wonderful informalities of traditionally red tapeish affairs (I love that Sully is let out of jail to be a pall bearer.) The film skirts Mayberry tedium because it never plays the small town tropes as vaudeville, and the pain that Sully’s self-absorption has caused is never entirely forgotten.
I have to also confess that Nobody’s Fool rings a particularly personal bell for me as well. Sully reminds me just a little bit of my father, who has a habit of being everywhere and nowhere at once. I’ve spent many days in my youth going from place to place with my father and talking and eating and hearing stories and getting into little episodes. The final image of Nobody’s Fool is particularly moving and completely earned: Sully propping what’s left of his body up, a bit of rest fleetingly granted.
★★★½
December 19th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I remember this movie being described to me as “You know…that Paul Newman movie…where he blows Bruce Willis?”
December 20th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I forgot about this. I’ll check it out.