The Swimmer on DVD

Burt Lancaster turns is a very strong performance as, well, we aren’t really sure who he is - just that he has this penchant for a dip in his neighbors’ pools.

This is a Really Weird Movie, based on a short story by John Cheever, that starts out light enough but which gets progressively darker and more complex the longer you sit through it. And the longer you sit through it the more uncomfortable you become, until by the end you’re positively squirming in your seat.

Set in a well-to-do Connecticut suburb of New York City, where the estates can sprawl over many acres, Lancaster plays the middle-aged Ned Merrill, who everyone knows and, it seems initially, everyone loves. Seemingly out of the blue, he turns up at one particular poolside and, seemingly out of the blue, gets the idea that since each property between that particular one and his own has a pool, he can swim home on the river of pools.

The film unfolds episodically, as Merrill moves from estate to estate and pool to pool, almost like a TV series except that, rather than spending an entire episode at each home, he’s only there for a short vignette.

As he travels, he meets people he’s seen recently, or hasn’t seen in a while, and as the story unfolds the journey goes from slightly eccentric sweetness and light, to outright madness and darkness. The descent is well foreshadowed as you accompany Merrill, until at the end you aren’t really surprised to find where he ends up, though you still arrive with a fairly emotional wallop.

You really have to experience The Swimmer to understand - but be warned that this is no easy time in the home theater.

Lancaster is outstanding as Merrill. Not only is his acting superb, his physical prowess dominates the screen. Though he must have been in his mid-fifties when the film was made, he’s more fit than most of us have ever been (which is really annoying to this "early fifties" reviewer - and this helps contribute to his character’s believability in that one wonders whether Merrill is compensating for other things lacking in his life.

The supporting cast is mostly made up of faces who aren’t particular famous, and that works for the better of the film. But watch for Joan Rivers!

There’s some interesting filmmaking here, too, including such touches as montages of images are used to give an emotional punch to some scenes. They really work.

But the ending, which we won’t give away, leaves us unsatisfied because we never learn who Merrill really is and what led him to the situations we witness in the movie. Perhaps that’s intentional - that the filmmakers are screwing with our heads the way Merrill has screwed everyone else’s in the movie. If so, fine, but we still felt cheated at the end.

Oh, well. We think we’ll have to go back and watch this one again after a while, to see how it sits on a subsequent viewing.

The DVD is good. Presented in digitally mastered anamorphic widescreen, 16x9 TV compatible, the video quality exhibits some grain but is for the most part clean and crisp, with good color. Audio is Dolby Digital mono and unremarkable, not surprising for a “mainstream” film of this age.

For extras, you merely get some trailers.

The Swimmer, from Columbia Tristar Home Video
94 min. anamaorphic widescreen, (1.85:1), 16x9 TV compatible, Dolby Digital mono
Starring Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard and Janice Rule
Produced by Frank Perry and Roger Lewis
Written by Eleanor Perry, Directed by Frank Perry

Tell us at TechnoFile what YOU think