65th Academy Awards (1993)
Nominations: 4
Wins: 1
“What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?” This clip, from Pacino’s big “courtroom” scene at the end of Scent of a Woman opened up every episode of the podcast Filmspotting, or at least did for as long as I listened to it until Matty Ballgame left. So to me, it’s just about as iconic a Pacino quote as there can be. And the Nineties were a very quotable period for Big Al, giving us hits like “she’s got a great ass and you’ve got your head all the way up it” and “just when I think I’m out they pull me back in.” So since I was in the area already, I figured I should probably finally watch this damn thing. Hoo-ah!
Pacino plays retired Army Lt. Col. Frank Slade, a decorated Vietnam veteran who has become blind and… eccentric in his later years. His niece hires a local prep school boy, Charlie (Chris O’Donnell), to stay with him while the rest of their family travels for Thanksgiving weekend. Little does she know, the colonel has his own plan and immediately absconds with Charlie on a first class flight to New York City. There he plans to stay in a five-star hotel, eat at the finest restaurants, drink top-shelf booze, visit Slade’s brother, sleep with a high-end escort, and kill himself.
So Charlie, who just signed up for an easy payday so he could afford to fly home to Oregon for Christmas, is in a bit over his head. It doesn’t help that he has his own bullshit to worry about: he was witness to a (by movie standards somewhat benign) prank and since he goes to a fancy prep school in New England, now his future is in jeopardy. So as you might expect, the two boys slowly bond over high jinks and share their trauma and advice with each other. Will Slade blows his brains out? Will Charlie get expelled? What do you think?
That’s me being needlessly dismissive, you watch a movie like this for the journey, not the destination. And in Scent of a Woman, the journey is Pacino’s performance. It speaks to what the Academy rewards that in a career full of both nuanced and over-the-top roles, the only time Pacino actually won an Oscar was for playing a depressed, disabled veteran. He got more and more yell-y as his career went on and Slade is maybe his zenith, what with the many cries of “hoo-ah” that I couldn’t believe were actually a thing and not an exaggeration pop culture made up. And damnit, it works. This movie’s two-and-a-half hours long and the only way it even gets close to getting away with that is thanks to how much I wanted to watch Pacino keep doing his thing. He dances the tango! He drives a Ferrari! Let him cook!
What else is there to say? I didn’t care about the Chris O’Donnell stuff at all, something IMDb commenters warned me about decades ago. It’s cool to see young “Phillip S. Hoffman” though! And one of June Squibb’s first roles, as campus old lady. Scent of a Woman was produced and directed by Martin Brest, whose previous film was Midnight Run starring Robert De Niro. I love how often those two are often linked but rarely actually on screen together. It was adapted by Bo Goldman from the Italian novel Il buio e il miele, which was already adapted by Dino Risi for his 1974 Italian film Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman). I wonder how much overlap there is between the two movies? Oh, and the music! The score was composed and conducted by Thomas Newman, who absolutely knocked it out of the park. It’s peak, sublime Nineties heavy orchestral stuff. I’m not sure if I really want to recommend this movie, but I defy you to check out the score and not be instantly transported back to 1992.