Uncomfortable masterpiece

Surviving the heat - just. Perhaps that's why I chose


The Swimmer

Physically fit and well built Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) decides to swim home across his affluent neighbourhood via the private pools of his friends. Sounds like a plan I thought, having not read the synopsis on the box. This is a movie from 1968, and demonstrates that in the fashions and mores of the time. Looking at it in a contemporary 2010 context I saw things that didn't sit right. Society was different then. Lancaster is fit and strong and full of the joys of spring. At one point he has a footrace against a horse, at another he jumps the hurdles meant for the horses, hurting his foot. He persuades his children's babysitter to join him for part of his cross country swim and her innocent nubility and his interest become at best inappropriate and at worst embarrassing, for her as well as for us. Later he befriends a young boy, rather suspect from today's perspective. I guess we are programmed to think the worst when it comes to men in bathing suits holding unrelated young boy's hands. I expected a kind of suburban comedy of manners adventure, and while the brittle drawing room dialogue is present, the story goes ever deeper, hinting at something that is never spelled out. I did not expect this sunny, privileged, bikini-laden movie to turn into a Tennessee Williams-style depiction of the disintegration of personality and descent into a personal hell of reality. He maintains the limp from his foot injury throughout the movie and his physical and emotional deterioration keep pace. We are never told the back story. This is a man living a delusion, and we watch it get stripped away. Painful almost. Lancaster acts. His eyes tell us all we need to know of his hurt and confusion. An uncomfortable masterpiece.

Look out for the young Joan Rivers at one of the pool parties.




The temperature is forecast to stay below 30 degrees C today. I'm really glad about that.