About Schmidt
This movie is about a sixty-six year old man named Warren Schmidt
who’s a recently retired and widowed. Suddenly he finds himself left
alone to face the loss and changes in his life. He decides to take a
road trip to visit places that he had not been to for a long times and
do some sightseeing before heading off to Denver for his daughter’s
wedding.
The film starts off with Schmidt’s last day at work before his
retirement, we see him sitting in dull silence in his office staring
at the wall clock as it ticks. As soon as the clock ticks 5, he stood
up and left the room, showing not particular emotion as the audience
may expect.
Then later that night, Schmidt had his retirement dinner at the local
café and it was as ordinary as it could be. People making toasts,
photo displays, a nice cake the shape of the company building … etc.
However when one of Schmidt’s friends made a speech about Schmidt’s
retirement, achievements and how Schmidt is now rich beyond the
monetary kind because ‘he can now retire with all the money and glory
and look back at his life thinking “I did it, I did my job.”’, we see
Schmidt’s smile faded as the camera zoom in to his face as the speech
was made. Clearly, Schmidt does not feel like his has achieved what
his friend said he has in his life.
Warren Schmidt is an ordinary guy with an ordinary life. His life
after retirement is still in a good order. His gets up at 7 a.m. sharp
even though he does not have to go to work anymore, he wife did all
the housework around the house and life at home was comfortable. Any
outsider who sees Schmidt would most probably think that Schmidt is o...
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...made the same journey as
Schmidt. Just like for the cattle he saw, there’re things that are
inevitable and beyond his control, like his daughter’s life for
example (though of course in comparison Schmidt has more control over
his own life than the cattle). Also in comparison Ndugu’s situation
Schmidt is a lucky person to not have to worry about having enough
food or shelter. But however when Schmidt compared his journey with
the journey the pioneers made centuries again he’s insignificant. In
the end it doesn’t matter, Schmidt decided that all he’ll be satisfied
with just one little change in the world. He realised he made a change
and that was enough for him, after being unhappy for all this time
with his achievements he realised how easy it was to be happy – all it
takes is to learn to be satisfied with what you got.