The Big Chill

Getting on...

Upon learning of the suicide of Alex, a college friend, a bunch of former class mates meet for his funeral, which turns into an impromptu weekend reunion. The reception after the funeral takes place in the home of Sarah (Glenn Close) and Harold (Kevin Kline), who is a prosperous businessman. His offer of accommodation to his classmates is readily accepted by the others; Michael (Jeff Goldblum) who writes for People magazine, Sam (Tom Berenger) a successful actor, Karen (JoBeth Williams) who is married to a wealthy, if straight-laced, businessman. There is also Sam (William Hurt) and Meg (Mary Kay Place). Once the wine starts flowing (and the odd doobie), the introspection begins.

Over the weekend, the layers of the characters are peeled away, as old friendships, affairs and grievances are rediscovered and analysed. On the surface, all the characters seem to be reasonably wealthy and successful. However, as the weekend progresses, it is clear that none of them are really satisfied. Sam seems to have hit the big time as the star of a successful detective series. But it's a cheesy show, and he feels he's wasting his talent. Michael used to be an angry young journalist during the Sixties but he his now reduced to living vicariously through the lives of his interviewees. Since he despises most of the people he interviews, that makes his own life pretty dreary. Nick is a complete cynic, who seems most affected by the death of his friend. His own life is every bit as chaotic as the own which drove Alex to kill himself, and Nick seems angered that Alex chose to escape rather than to stay and deal with life's unpalatable nature.

Harold and Sarah seem to be a happy, but it transpires that their marriage are still recovering from a fling between Sarah and Alex, when he was staying with them. In fact, each of the friends has some unresolved issue with Alex, and since he is no longer around, they must comfort each other. Alex was the wildest of them all, the one who would never conform, and his death has confirmed, with crushing certainty a fact that none of them had really accepted :- that none of them are rebels anymore. They have become part of the comfortable, middle-class conformity that they had despised in college. Alex's suicide seems to sound a death-knell for that small illusion that each of them had that their lives were making a difference to society.

However, after listening to their constant whining over the weekend about their lives in the Sixties, one can't help thinking, "Thank God for Ronald Reagan!". It is never clear what exactly they contributed to the 'protest movement' when they were students, other than grow an over-inflated view of their own importance. Consequently, their reminiscing comes across as tiresome very quickly indeed. Similarly, for all the "where are we now" moralising, none of the characters come to any meaningful conclusions about their own lives, or life in general.

What saves Lawrence Kasdan's 1983 effort from utter boredom is plenty of snappy one-liners, a great cast of actors who were all relatively unknown (who each get their little star turn) and an irresistible soundtrack of Sixties music(à la American Graffiti). In fact, one half-suspects that the plot was tweaked to suit particular songs. At times, the movie resembles a music video, when the acting takes a back seat to the music.

Two points are worth noting. Firstly, The Big Chill is a superior movie in every respect than its virtual remake, Peter's Friends. Kenneth Branagh's film had far less charm and much worse music, and would be been more accurately called Peter's Friends are Wankers. The second is that Kevin Costner was cast and filmed as Alex, but all his scenes (presumably flashbacks) were cut from the released version of the movie (The 'corpse' that is dressed for the funeral at the opening of the film is Costner). It seems like a wise choice - Alex remains as much a mystery to the audience as he does to the characters when we can't see him. We get tantalising glimpses of him through the reactions of the other characters - it would be difficult to achieve the same effect with a few flashback scenes. Kasdan promised to give Costner a decent role in his next movie as a consolation, which was the western, Silverado (Costner played alongside Kevin Kline again).

When he made The Big Chill, Kasdan had already established himself as a very successful writer of adventure movies such as The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). He had also made his directorial debut with Body Heat (1981) a film noir thriller starring William Hurt. The Big Chill is a more static and intimate film, but lacks any real insight. Though shallow and inconsequential , it is an entertaining movie nevertheless, due to the skill of the director and cast, rather than through any strength of the script.

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan.

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