Seize the Day

Amazon.com

This 1986 film--a dead-serious performance by Robin Williams, minus the overlay of schmaltz that informed his acting in the late 1990s--sat on the shelf and had no theatrical release, for obvious reasons: the film has the downbeat spiral of a 1970s film, relentless in its depiction of human frailty at the breaking point. That doesn't mean it's a bad film; to the contrary, it's actually quite a good film. But it is in no way audience-friendly in its vision of a human being who has reached the end of his tether. Directed by Fielder Cook, it's based on a Saul Bellow novel and strikes exactly the right note, a combination of absurdity and dread. Williams has the desperate energy of a man approaching 40 with nothing to show for his life--and a disapproving, disappointed father he's constantly trying to impress. Jerry Stiller is great as Williams's seeming friend, who hooks him into a business deal guaranteed to change his life and his luck. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant Jewish anti hero in a cannibalistic financial world.......2007-03-20

An interesting film adapted from Saul Bellow, the famous Nobel Prize winner. Here the character, a middle-age Jewish man, is accumulating all kinds of difficulties: he is fired, he is separated from his wife who hassles him for money, he is rejected financially and emotionally by his own father, he is fooled by a fake finance wizard who practically robs him of his money, and I should say etc and so on. The character is perfectly hysterical in an absolutely paranoid direction and we can see him going down little by little and it all ends up on a total dead end blind alley impasse. In other words a perfect loser in the Jewish culture who ends up crying on his own fate in the funeral of some other guy he does not know at all among people who don't know him nor he them. That is pure Saul Bellow who dedicated his whole writing career to such losers and total misfits in the world of making money not only to survive, not even to live, but to exist. In other words he is self immolating himself at the social stake of financial failure. Brilliant.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Williams the actor.......2007-01-12

I know it sounds sacreligious, but I've never thought Robin Williams was funny and the harder he tries to be funny the more unfunny I find him. I was really impressed therefore, the first time I saw him in a dramatic performance a few years ago and it was Seize the Day. I had no idea that he had such talent. He communicates everything that there is to be felt in the story by the strength of his performance.

Very good.......2006-11-19

This thin novel is a joy to read because it is a bright study of a man who is vaguely tortured by his own circumstances of the "now." The past haunts him. The future terrifies him. There is no wiggle room for this sorry fellow because the whole of the book takes place in one day's time. I could not help but see it as an ingenious story that dwelled insistently on the strength of palpable context and bare emotion.

Pathetic Tendency Made Funny.......2006-06-03

A middle-aged man at his wit's end; his past, present, and future seem bleak. Mr. Bellow wrote with ease and humor about such a man. Although the character is in his forties and has barely jumped over one hurdle after another throughout his whole life due to his own naivety, he continues to make more mistakes than ever. The story takes place only in one day. In about 115 pages the reader finds out what makes the man he is. It is also up to the reader to conclude Mr. Bellow's account of this man. Mr. Bellow's writing was fluent where he detailed each appearance and action thoroughly with a very good sense of humor. It is a fast and interesting read.

And then he snapped.......2005-03-13

Very faithful adaptation of Saul Bellow's novel, with Robin Williams in the lead role as Tommy Wilhelm, a 40-year-old man down and out on his luck and howling at the world because of it. Williams lets out all the stops and creates a harrowing and harried character who loses all hope. A powerful picture.

Average customer rating:

Seize the Day
Starring: Robin Williams , Richard B. Shull , David Bickford , Glenne Headly , and Stephen Strimpell
Director: Fielder Cook
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( S ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B000062Y5O

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