Nobody's Fool movie review & film summary (1995)
In a sense, not much happens in "Nobody's Fool." In another sense, great changes take place. Sully is a man who has put his truly important issues on hold for a very long time, while making a cause out of trivial issues. He will, for example, go to great lengths to steal the snow blower, or to score points off a dim-witted local policeman. But now, with Peter back, he finds that all the big issues of his early life - his marriage, his family - are staring him in the face again. Above all, he is challenged to be responsible to his young grandson as he never was to the boy's father.
The story, written by Benton from the novel by Richard Russo, unfolds according to its own logic. It has the patience to listen to silences. Above all, it benefits from the confidence of Newman's performance. He is not hammering the points home, not marching from one big scene to another, but simply living on the screen, and if the film's last shot is of Sully sound asleep, by then we understand why he has earned his rest.
The best moments in the film are based on relationships.
Sully is quite fond, for example, of his landlady, old Miss Beryl (Jessica Tandy, in one of her last performances). He has a bantering relationship with Wirf, the lawyer who seemingly has only this one fool for a client. His pipe dreams with Toby, which involve the two of them flying off to Hawaii, are important to him, because he is a romantic - and to her, because she trusts his goodness, and is fed up with her husband. And there are other characters, including a woman bartender and the local police chief, who help create the character of Sully by the way they respond to him.
At the center is Paul Newman. He is an exact contemporary of Marlon Brando, who is said to have invented modern film acting. Yes, and he probably did, stripping it of the mannerisms of the past and creating a hypercharged realism. Like Brando, Newman studied the Method. Like Brando, Newman looked good in an undershirt. Unlike Brando, Newman went on to study life, and so while Brando broke through and then wandered aimlessly in inexplicable roles (especially since "The Godfather" 20 years ago), Newman continued to work on his craft. Having seen what he could put in, he went on to see what he could leave out. In "Nobody's Fool," he has it just about figured out.
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