Why You No Longer Have to Hate ‘The Big Chill’
Editor’s Note: The Big Chill turns 33 this month, about the same age as the characters featured in the film. To mark the occasion, we asked two writers — one a Baby Boomer and the other born on the cusp of Gen X and Millennial — to offer their takes on Lawrence Kasdan’s influential ’80s movie.
“These are your parents,” writes Lena Dunham in an essay that accompanied the Criterion Collection’s 2014 rerelease of The Big Chill. And in the decades since the consummate Baby Boomer classic was originally released, many people have proudly hated on Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 dramedy largely for the same reasons they likely hated their parents during their adolescence.
When The Big Chill debuted 33 years ago this month, it was an instant hit with mainstream audiences and critics alike, netting upwards of $56 million in the domestic box office and going on to be nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Its soundtrack — which arguably spawned the now oh-so-common uber-curated movie soundtrack album that filmmakers like Zach Braff and Cameron Crowe have made their bread and butter — became a top 20 hit on the Billboard charts that year. The New York Times called the movie an “accomplished, serious comedy,” while Roger Ebert described it as “a splendid technical exercise” with “all the right moves.” Piers Handling, the current director of the Toronto International Film Festival, even credits the movie’s TIFF screening as being “the first film that put the [now ubiquitous] festival on the map in a significant way.” But none of that initial lovefest has stopped the movie from being repeatedly dismissed by many over the years since its release as nothing more than an experiment in narcissistic navel-gazing — and to them I say simply: Grow up.
It is a cliché but accurate truth that we often dislike most in others that which we see in ourselves. The Baby Boomers may be what Bill Keller calls an “entitled generation,” but yes, so are the millennials. (Really guys, it’s all relative. And I apologize, Gen X, that once again you get the short end of the stick.)
When The Big Chill’s once close-knit group of thirtysomething former college friends gather together in rural South Carolina to spend a weekend mourning the suicide of one of their own, a relative tsunami of nostalgic remembrances and at times admittedly indulgent introspection occurs. But the pithy one-liners never lag, and the smart, revealing repartee between the characters instead manages to elevate them beyond the simple stereotypes of their descriptors: the seemingly happily married couple (Kevin Kline and Glenn Close), the troubled Vietnam vet (William Hurt), the cynical lawyer seeking fulfillment in single motherhood (Mary Kay Place), the tabloid reporter struggling with abandoned ambitions of becoming a novelist (Jeff Goldblum).
Take for example how clearly Sam (Tom Berenger), the successful Hollywood actor questioning his newfound fame, and Karen (JoBeth Williams), the bored housewife still carrying a torch for him, cut to the quick of the awkwardness and artifice of trying to reconnect with a once-close friend:
Sam: “So how’s your life?”
Karen: “Great. How’s yours?”
Sam: “Not so great.”
Karen: “Oooooh, we’re telling the truth.”
Because telling the truth is precisely what The Big Chill does. And the truth is that it is easy to criticize adults for giving up their youthful idealism, just as it is easy to be idealistic when you don’t have bills to pay, or your own children or aging parents (or both) depending upon you.
This is a truth that is unfortunately universal no matter in what generation you are categorized: reality will come knocking, and it will want something from you that you did not necessarily anticipate… most likely when you, like the cast of The Big Chill, are in your late 20s or early 30s — finally free from the know-it-all adolescent haze that made your elders want to shake you for so long — and begrudgingly coming to terms with the fact that your adulthood may not go exactly as you expected.
If you’re in a Judd Apatow movie, the catalyst that forces you to examine your life could come in the form of an unplanned pregnancy. If you’re Greta Gerwig, it’s unaffordable real estate. In The Big Chill, said catalyst is a friend’s untimely death, and yes, this unexpected confrontation with mortality does lead to a weekend full of indulgent introspection and revelations that seem, at times, too easily won. (Really, Nick, you’re just going to solve all of your problems by blithely stepping into the shoes of your deceased friend Alex and shack up in this rambling South Carolina house with Chloe, the woman who was his girlfriend last week? Sure, nothing creepy about that.)
But just think of what the weekend among friends depicted in The Big Chill would look like now, in our selfie-obsessed world: all of the nostalgic Motown dance parties would be lit by the ethereal glow of iPhones and copiously documented on Instagram. Sorry (#sorrynotsorry, I believe the kids would say), but ultimately, it’s hypocritical to criticize the characters of The Big Chill for being too self-absorbed in their one-on-one conversations when we as a culture are essentially Snapchatting our entire lives. (Soon, with our sunglasses!)
Arguments about limited depictions of race and privilege in the film certainly have merit: the cast is unabashedly white, and its characters are, even in their lowest socio-economic incarnations, recognizable as members of the middle and upper middle class. But The Big Chill is — wisely — not trying to represent the entirety of Boomer-era America. It’s focus is narrowed in on a niche group. Why that niche group couldn’t have included at least one non-Caucasian friend is a completely legitimate question that could be better asked of the film industry as a whole. In fact, a planned remake of the film with an African-American cast was announced in 2007, but appears to have been scrapped.
In the end, The Big Chill may be self-absorbed, but it is also self-aware. Alex’s aforementioned girlfriend Chloe, played with subtlety by a Meg Tilly, is much younger than the core members of this talkative group of old friends and exists, among other things, as an outside observer to the events of their reunion. When asked to speak about herself at one point, Chloe stumbles for a moment, emitting some “ers” and “ums” before stately simply, “I don’t like talking about my past as much as you guys.” And with this one sentence, she lets us know that the movie is in on the joke, so to speak, and gives us permission to give into to the delicious self-indulgence of remembering the ideals of our youth through rose-colored glasses.
Because ultimately, The Big Chill is a celebration of the friends who know you not only as who you are now, but as who you once wanted to be. And there is something beautiful about that. Something your parents just might understand, if you dare to ask them.
For another take on The Big Chill, read our article Why ‘The Big Chill’ is Everything You Hate About Baby Boomers.
Watch The Big Chill on Tribeca Shortlist now.
Originally published at www.tribecashortlist.com on September 29, 2016.
