Der Schwimmer

When you talk about “The Swimmer", will you talk about yourself? No, but I'll talk about how The Swimmer is being resurrected five decades after its creation and serves as a forerunner of Don Draper, synonymous with “a complex, living, ragged character with demons". Quite rightly, because even after all those decades, The Swimmer is still as current as it was when the movie was made. Even if you are not a charming sinful dad who is already past the prime years of his life, who lives with his ideal American family in the suburbs, has a great time with beauties from the neighborhood before humbly returning home in the evening. It's a pity that the empty cover of “American smiles and weekend garden parties" treads water and takes up an entire half of the running time. It was supposed to start falling apart much sooner, because in the second half, with each new pool, jumping and diving deeper into the depths of surrealism, it gets better and better. And during the final pool scenes, it is by far the best among movies in a similar vein. (13.05.2020)