The Swimmer (1968)

The Swimmer (1968)

Frank and Flip make circles around Cumberland Heights, Tennessee. Siri had taken them on an ill-advised short cut around Clarksville, a small city on the Cumberland River. Rumor has it the Monkees’ song is peripherally a war-ballad.  That is, take the last train to Clarksville…so we can see each other one last time before I am shipped out of nearby Fort Campbell to Vietnam.

Fun stuff.

On this early autumn day, Graveyard and Flip have decided to avoid what probably amounted to a minor rush hour traffic jam. But they are on what amounts to a leisurely trek out to Memphis anyway so it doesn’t matter much. However leaving Route 41 puts you in a largish bend in the river which is easily entered on the east  and not so easily exited west side, with purported portages outdated, private, or even mislabeled rail road spurs associated with some of the industrial plants along the river. Finally dead ending at a zinc refinery, Frank and Flip have to double back. Frank takes one last ditch effort when out of the corner of his eye he spots River Crossing Road, heading west.  River Crossing twists and turns its way deeper and deeper into Cumberland Heights and lord knew it must hit the river soon.

But coming around a wide, blind bend, Flip suddenly screams, and Frank both jams the brakes and swings the Impala onto the shoulder and around two kids standing in the middle of the road. The kids, a boy and a girl, do not move. "What the fuck?!” Frank curses. Fifty more meters down the road, they hit the orange striped guardrail indicating this road went no further. They’d hit a bunch today and Frank automatically glides into a U-turn. He slows on the return so as to both not hit the kids but also slow enough to bitch them out.

This time the kids are gone. Frank and Flip stop and scratch their heads wondering where they got too. There’s a steep grade up and down on either side of the gravel road. If they went anywhere, they must of ran. Comparing notes, Flip and Frank agree the kids where in the neighborhood of about ten years old, blonde and wearing white. Flip can specify the boy had a collarless shirt and suspenders, the girl a peasant sack dress. What she most recalls is their dead stare.

Flip is convinced they were ghosts. Perhaps warning them of the dead end. Frank thinks they were the so-called black-eyed children. Who would’ve sucked out their souls if they had slowed down more. Or perhaps they were just creepy Tennessee feral hill folk fucking with them.

That was six months ago. And a lot has changed. Frank went on that Memphis trip a great man-child and has found in truth has had to grow rapidly. It was later that evening, Flip announced, nonchalantly from a deckchair in the West Memphis LaQuinta pool that she was pregnant.

My, a lot had changed since he was last here.

Frank was stunned and Flip disappeared into the pool to give him a chance to collect his thoughts.  Frank hated swimming.  Hated that wet cat feeling of being pissed off and not knowing who to violently take your rage out of. Always had.

If he had already hated swimming it would have been Burt Lancaster’s The Swimmer (Perry 1968) that put him over the top.  This film is what Frank is reminded of, pool-side suffering from sudden-onset of a midlife crisis.  

The Swimmer is a sad and creepy tale of a ne’er-do-well spending his midlife crisis swimming across the swanky Connecticut burbs. That is, making his way home by hopping pool-to-pool yard-to-yard and having a sad and creepy adventures at each neighbor.  It’s a must see if you want to ogle Burt Lancaster’s (From Here to Eternity; Zinneman 1953) package for two hours. It is an expanded reimagining of a John Cheever (The Wapshot Chronicle 1957) story of the same name. And a first effort at a film score by Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line; Attenborough 1985) and acting debut of Joan Rivers (Spaceballs; Brooks, 1987) to boot.

Don’t misunderstand. The summer-of-love creep factor is the film’s success. Not its failing. It tries and delivers an uncomfortable movie. A weird balance of meditative and off-putting that is worth the price of admission. In particular it’s cinematography that captures a lot of this. The garish colors ought be vibrant but somehow feel stale. The dialogue is the same. A little dead inside. It was re-released by Grindhouse Releasing in 2014 and currently not hard to get a hold of if you want it.

What’s brilliant to Frank is the serial climax of the film. Each embarrassing, awkward interaction, surely is the punch line of the film, but no,  there is more and more. We learn more about Lancaster’s Ned Merrill at every fence hop.  He has problems with his wife, his, job, his finances, his kids and his exes.  What starts as a new adventure for a new day drags Ned down at every turn. Here along the way the allegory slowly but violently slaps us in the face. It is a young vivacious Ned who sets out on his journey a sunny spring morning. He makes it back a broken and alone. Night. Raining. He curls up and cries. Such is life.

But Frankie is a big boy. Squeeze’s “Up the Junction” (1979) has eked out the Bee Gees “Specks and Specks” on Frank’s turntable. Such is life. Life turns on a dime. A wrong turn.  A causal disclosure at hotel poolside. A new adventure calls. Frank Jr. would be on the scene soon. Unlike the dead end ghost kids there was no driving around and turning back.

And who wanted to?

Graveyard Frank had never turned his back on a new adventure, and wasn’t about to start now.