Cheap The Swimmer (DVD) (Burt Lancaster) (Frank Perry, Sydney Pollack) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Swimmer

Swim Into the Twilight Zone...
It really is amazing how unknown this movie still is. If you are unfamiliar with it, you are in for a real experience. It is based on a classic short story by John Cheever, and it works like an extended, lost episode of the old "Twilight Zone" television series. A middle-aged suburban man (Burt Lancaster) decides to swim across his wealthy Connecticut county, through all the swimming pools of his neighbors back to his own home. As he makes his journey you gradually become aware that he is not all that he seems. Dark secrets keep getting revealed and it soon becomes apparent that we are witnessing a telescoping of the man's entire adult life into a few afternoon hours of an early autumn day. The film becomes a powerful allegory about disillusionment and tragedy, without being the least heavy-handed about it. Like Cheever's other great short story "The Enormous Radio", "The Swimmer" can be interpreted as a religious parable about the self-deception of fallen humanity. The comeuppance Lancaster receives is almost too intense to watch. This is a genuinely shattering movie that will stay with you.

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The minority opinion, based on incomplete data
After scanning the editorial and customer reviews here, I prepare to duck from the rotten tomatoes about to be thrown at me.

I've seen this film twice or, rather, tried to watch it twice. At age 20-25, I tried watching it, and found it to be a tedious exhibition of meaningless repetition. I fell asleep before I could get to the allegedly startling ending that gives it all meaning.

A few months back, after hearing about the film-redeeming ending, I tried again. Thirty minutes in, I was dozing off again. This is the only movie that ever did this to me. I decided to give it some chance, and skipped to the ending, to see what all the fuss is about. The ending seemed to be a non-sequitir, and shed no meaning, for me, on the beginning of the movie.

Of course, this means that I've never watched the entire film. But, I am a Burt Lancaster fan, and a very patient movie-viewer. For a film to twice fail to capture my interest, that's bad enough, for me, to write a review such as this. I give it three stars only because I know it is well-made and widely admired, but it will not grab everyone's interest.

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Unforgettable after...25 years
I first watched this film..in another language when I was a kid. How best to illustrate the impact it had on me? After 25 years I still remembered the story of it. Of a man swimming home and of the last scene where he coming home to find an empty, isolated house.

Flash back to the present. I found this movie by accident in the library. Wondering if it's the same one stuck in my mind for so long so I checked it out. The impact of watching it this time was still there (just a bit less since I already know the ending).

All in all it's really worth seeing. It left an unforgettably emotional impact on me..as a 10-year-old child. That's how best I could put it to say how good the movie is.