George W. Bush as Burt Lancaster's Ned Merrill in the movie, The Swimmer

[dumpster_baby]

An underrated avant garde movie from about 1968. From a John Cheever short story. Burt Lancaster stars as Ned Merrill, who re-appears in the lives of a group of upper class suburbanites after a msyeterious absence of some time. As he travels through his old neighborhood, visiting old friends and acquaintances, and swimmming in a series of pools, he makes his way back home.

As the movie progresses, and he gets closer to his home, it becomes apparent that all is not as it appears. Ned Merrill is living in a fantasy world of escapist delusion. Reality forced upon him by his interactions with other people as he swims home, and the viewer becomes aware that Merrill's life is in a ruin, and his swimming journey home is an attempt to go back to his earlier happier life. The people he meets in his journey force uncomfortable reality upon him, finally stripping of his illusions.


Here is a partial review from imdb:




In the opening scene of the movie a man is seen scampering towards a swimming pool on a beautiful summers day, he dives into the pool, swims a couple of lengths only then to be greeted with a drink at the side of the pool. It is clear from the outset that although he knows the people, he has not seen them for a while. Don and Helen are surprised but genuinely pleased to see their guest and before long they are joined by another couple the Forsbergs who he also knows from his past, they too are overjoyed at this unscheduled reunion. We are introduced to Ned Merrill a fit looking middle-aged man who comes across as friendly, likable, perhaps boastful but certainly easygoing. However, he becomes distracted when told of a neighbor the Grahams who have just installed a brand new swimming pool. To a perplexed group Ned announces that he plans to swim home via his neighbors swimming pools and promptly swims a length leaps out of the pool and then jogs away as fast as he arrived.
...

Gone is the beaming complexion and the confident posture for it to be replaced by an edgy and confused look as well as a hunched demeanor. The fit middle-aged man, charming and energetic at the beginning starts to look weak and pathetic as he limps a lonely walk to his next pool. From this point on things get worse for Ned Merrill and it seems the nearer he gets to his home the greater the hostility from folks. They all know him but do not want to associate with him. The viewer also begins to feel uncomfortable about Ned, not for what he has done (the viewer can only guess) but for his embarrassingly feeble approach he adopts when confronting the former acquaintances, lovers and friends. However, this is tempered only by the dislike for the people he meets on his way. At best they are pompous, loud, arrogant, shallow and at worse self-centered, smug and cruel. (I can't help feeling that I would have thrown a couple of haymakers rather than put up with the rudeness from some of the people he met).

The ending of the swimmer is quite shocking, Ned's American dream is in reality a nightmare, and you are left with an empty feeling. Now you know where he has been all along and why his neighbors have not seen him for a while. If you look and listen closely at the beginning you can see the red flags. It is obvious from the first two houses that he is hiding something and this is confounded by some of the confused expressions on the faces of Ned's old friends; they know something that the viewer doesn't. You are not sure if Ned Merrill is just simply embarrassed and is trying to put on brave face by acting as if things are normal, or else has suffered some form of mental breakdown due to his life imploding on him. At first you believe the former but as the film progresses you begin to see signs of his delusion, confusion and irritability, that quickly points to the latter.

For example, having trouble with his memory and his unwillingness or inability to comprehend the reality of his misfortunes. It would also explain his misreading of Julie's desire to be with him; it was not come on but rather the need to be with a mature fatherly figure. Was he was imagining that he was younger and in the early stages of courtship with his wife? Was his obsession with the past and his wish to swim the county a desire to rekindle happiness from his adolescence?

http://imdb.com/title/tt0063663/usercomments

[kskiska]

1. I remember that well.

It was filmed in my old neck of the woods in Westport, Conn.

Good analogy.