My friend & fellow PoMoCon Flagg Taylor joined me for another podcast—we talked about Paul Newman’s Oscar-nominated performance in Nobody’s fool, directed & written by Robert Benton (also nominated for the Oscar for Best Screenplay), after the Richard Russo novel about an ornery old man in a kind of rust belt town in upstate New York.
Newman plays Sully, a ne’er do well who also somehow seems to be the most public spirited guy in town. This is because he’s the embodiment of the town’s suffering—decades of lost jobs, kids moving out, lost hopes for the future have taken a toll on morale. In the circumstances, Sully’s wisdom—which, he says, is mostly “hang in there”—matters quite a bit. Indeed, he seems almost indomitable. Failure hasn’t broken him or even taken away his charm or his witticisms.
Then comes Thanksgiving, the occasion for the movie. It’s not clear what the people of this small town have such that they should be thankful & it’s no clearer whether they have the capacity to give thanks. Their lives are as funny as sad & they are inclined to take out their misfortune on each other—in short, the small town is rather like social media. Now, the problem in Nobody’s fool is that the setting of Thanksgiving is the family dinner table, but most of these families are unhappy or broken up. So it’s a good old-fashioned American story about Sully stumbling into putting his family back together. It ends up quite touching, accordingly, with Sully screwing up his courage to choose decency over scandal & love of family over selfishness. What’s more American than hoping, even against hope, for a second chance? “Better late than never” would seem to answer to “hang in there.”
It’s a movie full of witty lines, indeed, much of the comedy comes from people facing up to their failures & trying to find a way to rescue their self-respect in face of the evidence. Here’s Newman’s son, Peter: Mom's greatest fear is that your life was fun.
Sully: Tell her not to worry.
His landlady, Miss Beryl: Doesn't it bother you that you haven't done more with the life God gave you?
Sully: Not often. Now & then.
Finally, Newman himself on the state of things: Boy, a guy goes to jail for a couple of days & the whole town goes to hell!
I love this movie. "Hang in there" is a keeper.