The fly-over zone-the gray expanse of corn and nothingness polluting commuters with jet-lag. It's north of Texas and lacking any Southern Charm: it's white bread, iceberg lettuce, bologna and Miracle Whip-a tasteless concoction of nothing.
It's the Mid-West, and it's home.
Los Angelinos and New Yorkers don't know anything about it-it's a flat muddled gray mixture of conservative, boring people who ain't worth a damn. The only thing good about it is leaving it. Right? Hollywood usually ignores the Mid-West, and its images are typically fleeting, universally innocent Wizard of Oz renditions.
Enter director Alexander Payne.
Payne relishes in the bleakness of his native Omaha. His two widely-released films-Election and the new, terrifyingly brilliant About Schmidt-relish in the drab overcast skies and the scenery of the depressed, empty Omaha that he showcases in its full mid-winter glory. Both films deal with characters who, in realizing the emptiness of their "productive" lives, begin to search for meaning. What that character encounters is his conservative nature clashing with that of "outside" forces-ambition, change, and strange in-laws. Conclusion? His life still doesn't matter. The end.
Look in the newspapers, internet bulletin-boards and the like-Midwestern audiences are very troubled by About Schmidt. It's not even the bleak rendition of the Mid-West that is so bothersome. Troubling is that this film masquerades as a demographically universal life story. It's not. This film is about the Mid-West in all its stereotypical glory-it plays on the fears of every conscious Mid-Westerner who contemplates his or her own existence.
A child of Indiana, every time I don't finish my homework and think back to Indiana, I awaken terrified that I will end up like Schmidt-old, boring and ultimately insignificant.
I left the theater depressed. and terrified. Have I not yet broken away from this Mid-Western curse?
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