Nobody’s Fool – can’t let you go without a mention

Well, sometimes in life, they say love just ain’t enough and then again some of the times, all you need is love. That’s the paradox of it and somewhere in the middle-earth, we spend all our life trying to figure out which side is it that we belong to? And most of the times, we end up parched, all dried-up and right spat in the middle.

A story about a town (named Bath) waiting for its time, patiently. So patient is it that it borders on the illusion of being frigidly immobile – a forgetfulness seems to accumulate about the waiting for the day the sun shall rise and the snow melt away to reveal all things green and spring-full. The town is a sum total of the psyches of all its residents put together (well, on an average, of course).

All the characters, layered, after having lived life on the brink for soooooo sooo many years, well what do you expect? Mere wrinkles with no substance in their folds, naah! The one-legged Jewish lawyer who is always in a good mood in spite of never having hit the nail on its head, the contractor waiting the coming boom out with the most earnestness; waiting for things that he knows, deep down, will never be, the old landlady who hasn’t lost her spunk or her attitude, merely honed it over the years and uses it all in high energy concentrated display of individuality (miss beryl), the I love him, I hate him wife of the contractor who cannot get over her innocence, the friend who is really in need of friendship over all else, and the man who sees through all of the layers but adamantly refuses to look within – all this, entwined in their myriad relationships. But not complex at all, as simple and succulent as life itself – with its sweet and sour tangy taste. Some parts we like, and most we wanna turn a shut eye to.

Donald Sullivan (Sully) as Paul Newman (or maybe the other way around, but that is irrelevant here) is not a shining hero. He has a punched armour to say the least (not to mention the bad knee) and yet, you want to be around him, just like his friend in need. You kind of understand that need of Rub cause you feel it to. You want to be around a guy who gets you and then, does not judge you because or in spite of it. That is a huge quality to have. An outlook one acquires after having a lot of red marks in one’s own notebook.

The story is about making Sully look inwards, a journey he has been running away from all of his life, yeah, in spite of his bad knee. And then, making him stay unaltered – almost. Maybe a little unselfish, but mostly unaltered. Yup, he would be making all those very same mistakes again, if we would turn the wheel of time backwards, cause that’s what its about. You don’t go back and erase you reasons-why, you just understand them, stack them in categories with labels, come to terms with the closure and move on. That’s the beauty of it. Nothing changes – not the pace, nor the music or the scenary, nothing. Dreams crash even though the bleakest of rainbows do appear once in a while, but overall, everything is pretty much the same…and yet, a little more understood, tolerable and …yes, we do nudge ourselves a little bit towards the fireplace called love on a chilly December night in a sleepy town called Bath.