The Swimmer is one of those movies that probably wouldn’t be made. The concept of it sounds odd: A man, Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster), is visiting friends and realizes that all the houses between where he is and his home all have a pool. He sees it as a river through the valley and decides “to swim” home, meaning that he’ll have to swim through each of them.
You might wonder how that could result in an interesting film (as did I), but as the movie progresses you realize that something strange is going on. With each pool he meets someone he knows and even though the conversations are initially friendly they seem to become darker at each pool. Through these interactions you slowly learn more about Ned Merrill. It also becomes clear that this isn’t a simple story about someone wanting to visit pools, but that it’s a metaphor for his life story. You notice this for example by the fact that when he talks about his daughters they seem to have a different age each time. At some neighbours he says there studying, at others he asks if they can drop by to babysit.
What initially starts out as a crazy idea you go along with, eventually becomes something different through the way the movie is edited. There is no natural progression between scenes, images sometimes are dreamy and some remarks about the environment make your realize something is off (like the fact that the sun is shining, but doesn’t give off any heat). The final conclusion of the film therefore is stunning and leads to a lot of discussion about what you have just watched.
Ooh, this sounds interesting. Might check it out.
Yeah, it was interesting and very different.