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It’s officially November and the Thanksgiving season is almost upon us, and we’ll be meeting around the table with friends and family. These gatherings can be just flat out beautiful. But Thanksgiving can also be the most awkward time of the year. Sometimes, meeting back up with distant friends and family isn’t that great. It’s a time of confronting our differences and digging up old dirt, all over a plate of stuffing. Thankfully, and begrudgingly, some filmmakers have dug up these exact emotions and thrown them on the screen, all for our enjoyment… and discomfort. It’s hard to find a movie that does so as well as 1983’s The Big Chill, directed by screenwriting legend Lawrence Kasdan.
This is a movie that is funny, awkward, beautiful, and sad, all in only 105 minutes! It’s just about the most human movie you can imagine, concerned with the ideas of friendship and spending life in a meaningful and fulfilling way, but going about this by being so dang concerned with money, infidelity, and immediate satisfaction. Listen, It’s November, so if you’re looking for a film with all the beautiful and strange interactions that you’ll have at the big dinner, look no further than The Big Chill.
Keeping Things Simple
The Big Chill has just about the simplest story that there is. After the death of their close friend Alex (played in a deleted scene by Kevin Costner), an old group of friends comes together for his funeral and spends the weekend catching up. This group is played by an all star lineup of performers, including Jeff Goldblum, Glenn Close, and William Hurt, just to name a few, all bringing their A-game to Kasdan and Barbara Kenedek’s stellar script. The body of this group covers just about every type of person you can imagine. You’ve got a doctor, actor, real estate attorney, Vietnam vet, and more. It’s a super varied group of people, one that this stellar cast manages to elevate from a killer script by bringing a greater sense of individuality to their character’s personalities.
Over the course of the weekend, the gang doesn’t just catch up, emotions end up running the whole gamut. One minute, everyone is boogying around the kitchen, cooking up a nice feast for later in the evening, then we smash cut to somebody bawling their eyes out in the shower. Kasdan has a field day subjecting his viewers to a good bit of tonal whiplash in this movie, but it works. There’s a pace and a structure to it that you don’t see in too many other films, one that reflects the ways that emotions and situations can change on a dime in real life. So while it can be a bit jarring sometimes when we jump from one group of people having a funny, easygoing conversation immediately over to something as heavy as mourning the death of a close friend, it works. Sometimes, that’s just how life is, and the exceptional performances from the cast really help sell that in a very natural way.
The movie also feels relatable in the way that it brings old friends together. By and large, this is usually a cause for celebration. It’s always great getting back together with your oldest and closest friends… right? Yeah, about 95% of the time, but then that other 5% of the time, things can get a bit hairy when past grievances make their way to the surface or immediate problems fester their way into the good times. Most of the movie is spent with characters laughing about old times, eating and drinking all sorts of tasty junk food, going on long walks, and a whole bunch of (bizarre) flirting. It’s such a great hangout movie that really captures the feeling of a long-lasting group of friends, just way, way flirtier than most. Occasionally, a conversation turns from two characters throwing around the idea of hooking up to stories about Vietnam, or the group enjoying a fine meal, only for Close’s character Sarah to start crying over not having a seat pulled up for their absent friend Alex. But during tougher seasons of life, sometimes emotions and conversations just flip on their head. Typically, most writers and directors might prefer to isolate the funny from the sad in their comedies, but that’s where Kasdan is unafraid to go.
A Killer Soundtrack
The film is filled to the brim with fantastic character interactions, all backdropped by a killer soundtrack, featuring artists like The Band or Creedence Clearwater Revival. Even if the soundtrack’s choice in music isn’t really your particular taste, there’s such an iconography to most of the picks that you’d be hard-pressed not to feel the least bit sentimental. The film’s soundtrack brings such a fantastic nostalgic air to it all that really makes these happier moments in the film shine. Even when The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” sends the characters out of Alex’s funeral, it takes one of the saddest bits of the film and turns it joyfully bittersweet. The film is definitely a celebration of friendship, but it also seems to be a celebration of life in general, making the most of it while we are here. Putting the film’s strangest character moments aside, it’s an endlessly relatable film about looking back on your life and the way you spent it with those around you.
Boomer Alert
But listen, while this film portrays its protagonists as a fun and loving friend group full of fantastic and lively people, these characters are all actually kind of the worst that their generation has to offer. Everyone in the film is so well off with money, riddled with success, and largely all married or at least in long-term relationships, which is all great. Despite all of these things, this bunch would rather be unhappy with their state in life, favoring an existence enraptured with materialism, substance abuse, and toxic romance. It’s all played for laughs or to make you sympathetic for these characters’ various “problems”, but it’s all such a joke. Jeff Goldblum plays Michael Gold, a successful writer for People Magazine who regularly flies around the country for various high-profile jobs. This isn’t enough for him though, as he really wants to just be working on his novel. Not only that, despite the fact that his character has been in a relationship with a woman back in New York for some time, there’s a recurring joke that he is almost always trying to get with every woman in the house. He even goes after the now deceased Alex’s girlfriend Chloe (Meg Tilly). But apparently this is all just supposed to be funny and harmless? It’s so strange.
Almost everyone in the movie partakes in some sort of cheating on a significant other, and beyond cheating, there’s one particular strange move that the movie goes out on. Sarah Cooper (Glenn Close) lends her husband Harold (Kevin Cline) off to help their friend Meg (Mary Kay Place) get pregnant. It’s one thing that Meg is looking around the entire movie for one of the guys to help her in this next step of her life, okay, yeah. That being said, when Sarah tells her husband that she needs him to “do a favor for Meg,” resulting in them not just doing the act, but being passionate in the process, it just feels like the strangest moment ever put to film. There isn’t one human being on the Earth that is down with this part of the movie. Move over, Eraserhead, move over Jodorowsky, The Big Chill officially has made most bizarre story choice ever.
Even with its faults and ridiculous characters, Kasdan’s 1983 comedy-drama still rocks and is a perfect cozy fall dramedy. It’s super funny throughout the 101-minute runtime and is touching out the gate. You know when a writer has you feeling your emotions just a few minutes in that you’re in good hands. Yeah, the characters are insanely self-centered in the way that the worst boomers can be, but they’re also loving of their friends… well, maybe too loving. It’s undeniable, watching this group of ex-college buddies still hold each other so valuable after such a long time will have you reflecting on your own personal relationships. It’s a movie that flips its own emotions back and forth again and again, but it’s cathartic in that way.
This fall, pop on The Big Chill, one of the most relatable, baffling, beautiful, hilarious movies of the 1980s.
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