About About Schmidt

About Schmidt is a film that has been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe this is why. Louis Begley, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, notes that

for all the radical changes in the plot and milieu, my most important themes were treated with great intelligence and sensitivity. These are Schmidt's frightful and, I believe, lifelong loneliness; the devastating realization that we can botch a relationship that matters to us above all others — in the event, that between Schmidt and his daughter — even though we have worked hard to make it succeed and believe with some reason that we have done a good job; the way in which our fears of the Other and prejudices against the Other imprison us.

NYTimes article: 'About Schmidt' Was Changed, but Not Its Core