bjacob
I agree with what Roger Ebert has written about this movie: something in the style of "it knows all the moves but has no payoff and it doesn't go anywhere". It's interesting as a portrait of (very) early middle age but eventually you're left with a question: "so what?".There are also some minor inconsistencies which are each very forgivable but all together contribute to the disconnect I feel towards this movie: it's clearly set in the 80s but the characters are supposed to have a past rooted in the 60s counterculture, and yet they seem so relatively young. And yet they have turned that page pretty swiftly, and made it big, while continuing from time to time to utter oddly naive considerations.
There's a lot of music in the film, diegetic and not. Sometimes we get whole songs while the characters do stuff in the background, and it seems a bit of a narrative copt-out.For the positives: it's very well acted and contains several genuinely funny moments. But I struggle to see what's supposed to be "seminal" about it. There's another film on a very similar theme, "Le déclin de l'empire americain" -- which feels infinitely more real and poignant than this one.
Steve Pulaski
The Big Chill opens with Harold Cooper (Kevin Kline) and his wife Sarah (Glenn Close) receiving a phone call telling them their friend Alex has just committed suicide. At the subsequent funeral, Harold and Sarah reconnect with their friends from University of Michigan, including Sam (Tom Berenger), a successful actor, Nick (William Hurt), a Vietnam War veteran, Karen (JoBeth Williams), the dissatisfied and frustrated wife to Richard (Don Galloway), Meg (Mary Kay Place), a real estate attorney, Michael (Jeff Goldblum), a womanizing jokester, and Chloe (Meg Tilly), Alex's girlfriend.Following Alex's burial, Harold, much to Sarah's dismay, invites everyone over to their lakehouse for the weekend, where friendships rekindle and old memories are revisited, as the gaggle of formerly close friends decide to recount past experiences and elaborate on current ones in the face of tragedy. The film shows that certain calamity does indeed bring people together, and Alex's death has allowed for a bunch of old chums to address their friendship, and, inevitably, their relationship with Alex, in addition to seeing how they could've prevented Alex's suicide.The Big Chill is a film that winds up swooning people into thinking it's a fairly deep examination of grief and death, in addition to a cultural exploration, when it's really a film that suffers from its own glibness. The film has a lot of great music, which - in its organizations seems more like a 1970's era playlist - sometimes takes prominence over the film's characters. Being that there's little in the way of plot progression, the bulk of the film is left up to the characters, whom do an middling job at keeping the film going for the first half, at least.The problem with The Big Chill is the real film doesn't start until the last forty minutes. The real animosity and drama doesn't begin until all the small-talk is out of the way, and while that's maybe commonplace for these kinds of situations, it makes for a film with stifling inertness. During the first hour, the only remotely interesting character is Michael, thanks to his hilarious insights ("It's unfair that they throw you a great party when they know you're not going to be there," he states during Alex's funeral) and his wit, while the remainder come off as narcissistic brats with little offer.The music in The Big Chill is uniformly strong, recreating that nostalgic vibe of the 1960's and rekindling that spark of youthful idealism and the inspiration of hope and change. It also works to help the audience remind themselves of the time period in which these characters grew up, with hits from Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Temptations, and Aretha Franklin, all of whom adding to the feel of the 1960's encapsulated in a film set years after the decade of revolutionary change in America. The problem is that, with this assortment of terrific tracks and their placement in the film, The Big Chill feels like a mixtape or a playlist, inevitably spawning keen memories but doing little in the way of being substantial or memorable in a long-term sense.The remaining forty minutes, however, challenges screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan (who also serves as director) and Barbara Benedek, in addition to the characters they have penned for this film. The final act of the film allows for true emotions to bleed through, and the soundtrack to finally take a backseat to some real emotional honesty, in a film that has ostensibly been delaying it with recognizable golden oldies and chuckle-inducing dialog. The focus on pathos becomes much darker, and the eventual sympathy and sorrow for Alex's untimely death is finally questioned in a way that forces all the characters to be interrogated in some way.While The Big Chill develops into a more watchable film during its last forty minutes than it was in the preceding sixty, it's ultimately still a film too focused on glib revelations and momentarily insightful instances. It's the kind of film that, during its time and its era, it was seen as an intelligent and fascinating social critique, whereas in the present day, it's nothing more than a potential-filled drama that is nowhere near as relevant or as impacting as it was in its heyday (along with other films like Easy Rider).Starring: Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, JoBeth Williams. Directed by: Lawrence Kasdan.
