Nobody's Fool

I've written of this 1994 Paul Newman film before, set at Thanksgiving in a declining small town in upstate New York.  My friend Titus Techera, who did an American Cinema Foundation podcast on the movie, has now published a piece in the Washington Free Beacon.  Some excerpts which capture the essence of the film:

Thanksgiving is a very American holiday, a family holiday, but people don’t go to church much these days, so it’s not exactly about faith. It’s easier to see Thanksgiving clearly if you look at a character like Sully, who seems to have nothing for which to give thanks, being a loser. That’s what Nobody’s Fool is all about. Sully gets a second chance, to grow old by becoming a grandfather and a father and putting aside his suffering. All his anger turns to comedy, and he even learns to laugh at himself a little. His small success is also America’s success; it’s somehow about learning to deal with disappointment.

Newman makes the quaintness as well as the suffering of North Bath come to life. What starts as a caricature of Tocqueville’s New England township turns into a community, where people help each other, if grudgingly, and gather for ceremonies like a funeral, though some of them have to be let out of jail for the occasion. The bitterness of losing jobs and hope for the future is sweetened by the families and friendships we see tested and proved in the story. And Sully turns out to be almost a leader, not just a malcontent.