(audio included for paid subscribers)
Relatively soon, I will die. Maybe in 20 years,,
maybe tomorrow, it doesn't matter. Once I am dead,
and everyone who knew me dies too, it will be as though
I never existed. What difference has my, life made to anyone?
None that I can think of. None at all.
The cinematic journey of Warren Schmidt is rarely discussed in the same breath as the ecstatic realizations of Eastern mystics or the high-concept simulations of The Matrix. Yet, About Schmidt stands as one of the most precise maps of the awakening process ever committed to film. It is a study in the delamination and deconstruction of selfhood – the layer-by-layer stripping away of the papier-mâché mask of the self to reveal the void beneath. Schmidt is not a spiritual seeker; he is undergoing a reluctant awakening, forced to shed the layers of a life that, as he discovers, was never really his. Once the veils start burning, it’s hard to make them stop.
Log In or Register to Continue
Such a man is like a dreamer who wakes from a dream of grief to a greater sorrow yet. All that he loves is now become a torment to him. The pin has been pulled from the axis of the universe. Whatever one takes one's eye from threatens to flee away. Such a man is lost to us. He moves and speaks. But he is himself less than the merest shadow among all that he beholds. There is no picture of him possible. The smallest mark upon the page exaggerates his presence.