Older Doesn’t Always Mean Wiser: “Nobody’s Fool”

Why’d I watch a 1994 character piece called Nobody’s Fool? Partly it had to do with the death in May of writer/director Robert Benton, whose down-to-earth work I’d long admired. As a complete unknown, he co-wrote (with David Newman) Bonnie and Clyde, one of the most remarkable films of the remarkable film year 1967. Over a decade later he both wrote and directed Kramer vs. Kramer, winning himself two Oscars. And there was another Oscar in 1984, honoring his original script for Places in the Heart, a film based—I’m told—on his own Texas family. He directed that one too.  

 Watching Nobody Fool was my salute to Benton’s talent for making the everyday seem special and unique. It was also my tribute to co-star Jessica Tandy, for whom this was a final film. (The original Blanche DuBois died at age 85, just before the film’s release.)  Many others in the film’s cast are also no longer with us: it’s particularly poignant to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in the small but goofy role of a small town cop who’s a little too quick on the trigger. But of course the biggest loss has been that of star Paul Newman, who—then just shy of 70 years of age—was nominated yet again for a Best Actor Oscar for this role. (He lost to Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, but at this late point in his career Newman had already finally snagged a statuette for The Color of Money.) He would be nominated once more for 2002’s Road to Perdition, voiced a role in Disney’s Cars in 2006, and passed from the scene in 2008, at age 83. 

 Nobody’s Fool is poignant, but also quite funny. (At least some of the credit should go to novelist Richard Russo, who wrote the novel on which the film is based.) Set in the dead of winter in an upstate New York hamlet where everybody knows everybody’s business, it focuses on Donald “Sully” Sullivan, a sometimes-construction worker with a bum knee, an appreciation for poker, and a boyish enjoyment of playing tricks on his boss (Bruce Willis). He may seem happy-go-lucky, but there are dark memories of a drunken father and of his own greatest misstep: walking out on a wife and young son many years before. Though he only moved across town, Sully and his son have never re-connected. But the son is back now, with kids and problems of his own, and Sully finds himself in the odd position of needing to act like a grown-up. It’s a layered and thoroughly fascinating performance.  

 Part of what makes the film feel so lived-in is the casting of veteran actors who really help the fictional North Bath, New York feel like a community full of lovable eccentrics. There is, for instance, the rather inept lawyer (Gene Saks) who puts up his artificial leg as his stake in a poker game. Bruce Willis, who reportedly took a major pay cut for the chance to act with Newman, is memorable as the construction boss (and feckless womanizer) who makes Sully’s life miserable but owns a really classy red snow-blower that becomes a running joke. As Willis’s neglected wife, Melanie Griffith is her appealing self. 

 What’s really striking about Newman’s character is that—for all his reputation as a ne’er-do-well—he turns out to be one of the kindest souls in town. It’s his kindness that Jessica Tandy sees in him when she refuses to stop being his landlady, despite her own son’s bluster. Yes, he’s a nuisance, but we sure need more of his ilk.