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''Out of order? Who the hell do you think you're talkin' to? I've been around, you know? There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn't nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are... executin' his soul!''
A prep school student needing money agrees to "babysit" a blind man, but the job is not at all what he anticipated.
Al Pacino: Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade
Scent of a woman is a masterpiece. First of all because Al Pacino creates a character he is in no way close to being in real life. He plays a retired lieutenant-colonel which is nothing, but a blind one. His blindness is the symbol, and result, of both a heroic career and a sad end because he was passed over for general. This mixture of so many emotions and feelings and frustrations is marvelously conveyed by the actor. His tone, his behavior, his general stand, his unpredictable reactions, his decision to leave this world and his second decision to stay can be read in the way he speaks, the words he uses, the expressions his blind face carries, his attitudes toward other people, etc.
He is a millionaire in layered emotions. But it is a masterpiece for so many other reasons that I am only going to quote a few. First it is a journey, the journey of a prep school teenager, a student on a scholarship mind you, from Oregon to Cambridge, Massachusetts, then to New York, a round trip with the colonel he is taking care of for the Thanksgiving long week end. This journey, and particularly the lap to New York and the subsequent events, are an initiation.
The young chap is to learn what principles are in life and that you have to stand by them, especially if you are poor and fragile in body and social status: then be strong in soul, mind and spirit. Your ethics are your only asset and power in life. He also has to learn how to understand his colonel companion and feel when he has decided to send him buy cigars while he is putting an end to his life and the gun loaded with his bullets are an impressive key to the solitary tower of growing up with death all around you.
''I'm in the dark, here!''
He saves that man with a crazy idea of a ride, for a blind man, to drive a Ferrari in the Bronx or somewhere under the Brooklyn Bridge, and with all the frills of such a ride including the cop who catches him speeding but does not realize he is talking to a blind man. But this film is also a story about the elite education these Ivy League prep schools provide the young men of today with to prepare them to be the leaders of tomorrow. There I will not hint too much at that side of the story. Let's say an act of vandalism which is a student prank and nothing more, leads the headmaster into menacing the two student witnesses, with the worst punishment going as far as trying to buy the cooperation of the poor student. The final disciplinary hearing is absurd in its logic. The three culprits go through because there is no clear cut witness, the rich one, with his father, pretends he did not have his contacts on but gives the three names with a maybe, and the poor one, Charlie by the way, refuses point blank to be a fink, a stool pigeon. And there the intervention of his suicidal colonel saves the day. That you will have to find out by yourself. In many ways it is a lot stronger than Dead Poets Society and the drama is avoided. It is better because it is the vision of a poor scholarship student and not the vision of one rich kid, in recent society and not in the 1920s or so.
The point of view makes it a lot more powerful about society and courage, even if less dramatic,this is a story about hope, the merging of young and old minds coming together. Scent of a woman is about living, the beauty of life and at times, when you believe you have nothing to live for, are the times when you have so many aspects and joys to carry life on. This is a story of hope and friendship.
''Well, gentlemen, when the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay.''
10/10
