Scent of a Woman turns 29: Al Pacino’s high-strung drama is a romantic saga on isolation and hope

Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman was a redemption of sorts for Al Pacino, who at the point was featuring in less-than-central roles in films that seem to not bolster his career in any specific direction. The 1980s especially saw this phenomenon occur with him in films like Revolution or Cruising which were never box office stirrers. 

But with Scent of a Woman, Pacino almost had a comeback of sorts, which required him to play the diminishing-in-stature retired officer Captain Frank Slade with a visual disability. Pacino’s performance as Frank was both well placed and underwent considerable character evolution. A tour de force of sorts, Frank Slade’s role brought the actor fair equity that eluded him for quite some time in the then-recent past.

Comfortably ensconced in his easy chair, Frank met his aide Charlie Simms (an endearing Chris O’Donnell), with a glass of premium scotch and cigarillos. At the onset, Frank establishes that he is completely no-nonsense. 

His problematic words immediately give way to the constant pain he is subjected to psychologically, having understood that his vision is failing him with each passing day. Hurt and toxicity go hand in hand, making Frank an epitome of cantankerous pessimism. “I’ll wipe your nose in enlisted men’s crud!” Frank simply tells his babysitter for Thanksgiving.

Without warning, Frank whisks Charlie away to New York City for an unplanned joyride that consists of living the superior life. In comes the stay at Waldorf Astoria and riding around town in a swanky limousine. As Charlie gets increasingly flummoxed by Frank’s innumerable moods, the audiences are made privy to Frank’s life as a soldier, his struggles, his ego, his regrets, all balled up neatly within a heavy cloud of regret. 

Frank downs pegs of ‘John’ Daniels [“He may be Jack to you, son, but when you’ve known him as long as I have…”] and speaks harsh truths, often making him the easy enemy. Charlie’s affable nature and meek-mouthed demeanour go a long way in establishing the power play between the two. But Brest’s skill as a filmmaker shines in his treatment of Charlie with respect to Frank. 

Charlie comes in with a clean conscience. He is a sincere scholar who understands his limited means to make it big in the world, a fact which also makes him unassuming of any privileges. The main reason audiences might feel disconnected from Frank is that his authenticity as a person works as anodyne for his verbal abuse towards the people he loves. 

In fact, Frank’s “honesty” is so brutal, it often takes the guise of offhandish charm — “There’s only two syllables in this whole world worth hearing – pus-sy.” Yet sometimes, his love for the “fairer sex” is more than apparent in his almost-reverential words on loving a woman ­­- “Have you ever buried your nose in a mountain of curls, and wanted to go to sleep forever?”

Pacino slipped into his routine method acting with Frank Slade. He was known to have visited multiple establishments for the blind just so he could train how to unfocus his gaze, an automatic idiosyncrasy that comes with visual impairment. His conviction to the craft was so convincing and continuous that the actor actually experienced a nasty fall while filming and procured a serious eye injury.

Pacino’s lost look, which works as his guard most of the time, lends a peek into his innocence behind the layers of hatred. His vehemence to isolate himself and become the social nemesis for all comes naturally to him as a defence mechanism. Worthy of note is a memorable scene where Pacino’s Frank adorns his hesitant arms with the svelte frame of Donna (played by the alluring Gabrielle Anwar). Frank dances the Tango, with a pleasantly surprised expression flooding his gleeful smile, so as to wonder at his own accomplishment. 

Brest’s insistence to pepper the narrative with such moments of intimacy are a purposeful move, to remind viewers that there’s a beating heart beneath all that snarl. Frank gushes, blushes and melts at his disbelief that a woman like Donna would deign to share the dance with him. However, for Pacino, it’s a crucial instance of underplaying his overbearing military harshness just so that Anwar can have her moment under the sun.

Frank is anything but subtle, but his garrulousness is what makes it so difficult to ignore him. He slurs when drunk, he lashes out, he quietly reads Charlie and finally, extends the much needed guiding hand to iron out the complexities of his aid-turned-confidante’s life.

In a bid to prove his isolation, Frank readies his pistol to fire a shot and end it all. Charlie’s intervention is not only accidental but almost serendipitous, since Brest shows his audience the real Frank Slade, a wasting middle-aged man, hungry for some attention and love. 

“You know you don’t want to do it,” says Charlie, pointing at the gun and asking for it, “give me the gun Colonel.” And just moments after he’s screamed [the now famous dialogue] “I’m in the dark, here,” Slade quietly hands Charlie the weapon, admittedly resigning to his fate.

Bo Goldman’s touching screenplay even reached a crescendo with his monologue at the end, crisply concluding it with a “Hoo-ah!!”

The character won Pacino an Oscar after seven prior nominations. Yet, the win remains one of the most contentious ones in awards history. Most critics of the time slammed the film, describing Frank as “a male weepy with a size problem,” or even the character as “a gift of a part… it allows [Pacino] to be joker, orator, virtuoso, humanist and dirty old man.”

Hailing from a school of acting that celebrates larger than life performances [Pacino was trained by Stella Adler, who often focused on the ‘size’ of the performance], Frank Slade was right up Pacino’s alley. Yet, it was a far call from his layered subtlety and restraint in roles like Michael Corleone (The Godfather).

Scent of a Woman is a celebration of hope, even though it was packaged with a generous dollop of toxic characters and their wayward principles. Brest showed that there will always be the light at the end of the tunnel, all one needs to do is have the will to step out into the light.

Watch the film here .