The Swimmer

When I was in high school in the late 1960s, several of us went on a Saturday afternoon to see the movie ‘The Swimmer’ with Burt Lancaster. He was the lead, and nearly the only, character. One day, he starts to swim in a backyard pool, and then he’s going from house to house, swimming the length of the pool and moving forward to the next pool toward home. The interactions with other people seem rather cold, and he keeps pushing forward, as though trying to swim out of his life. There's an urgency in his role. I’m still wondering what all that was about.