This film is a minor classic
This film is a minor classic. Like any good work of art, it brings more to you when you watch it as you get older. I first saw it when I was 34 and loved it (coming from a place like Richard Russo writes about it, I was thrilled to see a movie that so accurately limned that life, as Russo did in EMPIRE FALLS).
When I saw it then, I thought I knew Sully -- that he was a lovable loser, but a loser -- a f---up. I saw it now that I'm nearly 50 and realize -- Sully is not a loser. That he is a real human being with an important part to play in the lives of the people he knows.
I know more now, now that I realize I know nothing.
Seeing it in my early 30s, I thought Sully was a fool not to go with Melanie Griffin's character..... But of course now I realize, he couldn't go. He had character (she was right -- he was a man among men) -- he was fundamentally decent, and did right.
He wasn't a fool and a loser, not to take his "chance." There was no chance to take. What he did was comfort Griffith's character, in his way.
What's so great is that she says that Sully always makes the wrong decision. DAMN! When you get towards 50, and look back, you realize that practically every decision you ever made was wrong! It's so true to life. But of course, though it seems "wrong" (and did when I was 34), what he did was right.
Luck (Fate -- the Gods) -- were looking over Sully. As he was fundamentally kind (as he was to poor Rub, a beautiful performance by Pruitt Taylor Vince. (With Rub, we're in Steinbeck territory, but who isn't moved by Sully and Rub on the stoop in the cold and Sully -- so beautifully acted by Newman -- says he should have stayed in jail, blowing away the sentimentality?)
I could write more, but it's personal. I had an uncle (by marriage) who was like Sully & Dub..... And many years later, reminiscing with our older female cousins, they said that they thought our Uncle must have been (like Rub) a moron or even retarded. Well....that could have been true -- he died when I was 14 -- but our father had abandoned us and my brother and I remembered his kindness towards us. He was our uncle, and did things with us. Simple things.
Years later, my father told me that when he was leaving my mother, our Uncle told him that my brother (slightly older) was afraid of abandonment.... we were younger than 10 -- and he told my father that he would look after us and make sure nothing happened to us.
He was Sully (though more like Dub, in his way).....
(His son, incidentally, became a notoriously bank robber. But as Moustache says in IRMA LA DOUCE, "But that's another story.)
I never even thought of my uncle in this way until just recently.... People like Sully are real and important and make such a difference in people's lives.
Again, Steinbeck territory. But despite the verdict of the academic critics, Steinbeck was a great writer. He knew and cared about people. Common people. (Anyone who is laid off, read Steinbeck's CANNERY ROW and other of his Depression Era books. You'll realize that other people went through psychologically what you are going through now.) Steinbeck had compassion.
This film has COMPASSION.
NOBODY'S FOOL is like a re-imagining of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (a great classic, but another type of film -- Frank Capra was dissed for his sentimentality, as was Steinbeck, but people need sentiment; within bounds, its acceptable in art) -- though it is more realistic.
A beautiful film and I'm shocked by its low rating on the IMDB.
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"Why do people always laugh in the wrong places?"
--George Bailey