1980s film revisited: The Big Chill and Crossing Delancey, Part 3

This is the conclusion of a series examining why some movies age better than others. For previous posts, see parts one and two.

Use of music

The Big Chill uses music in what was a startlingly new way at the time: as mini-commentary on what events were unfolding on-screen, and as short MTV style music videos to provide respite from heavy issues in the story.

So, for instance, we get The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" during a funeral and prior to its reception. Later in the movie, there's an extensive scene of washing-up in the kitchen to a Motown classic that was very fresh and creative at the time. This approach to the soundtrack was fresh and creative at the time.

However, overall I think that the music acts as a crutch in the film, hastening us along when the story is thin or starts to feel leaden. While I admire the innovative approach, it comes at too high a cost. The characters and plot is subjugated to the rise of nostalgia and illusion of progression triggered by 60s classics.

So, instead of focusing on Kevin Kline's character, we forget about him as we watch him singing to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising". You feel like you're being taken somewhere, but the destination, like his ride in the car, is forgotten and it only matters that he, and we, sing along. Yes, it is a great song. But what about the story?

In this way the film manipulates the audience's feelings for 60s classics while shortchanging us on the story.

As the songs progress, we too feel like there's a forwarding of the story. But it's an illusion: the only thing forwarded is that we get to re-live an old song. Any sense of progression is merely the emotional response as we move through the song to its completion.

Crossing Delancey relies on 50s style shoo-bop songs early in the film, but this quickly fades into the background as we become more involved in the story and characters. Instead of acting as a crutch, the music sets audience expectations that this will be a light, single-note comedy.

Once you have found him, never let him go

There's a remarkable scene in Crossing Delancey that I'd almost say was the pivotal scene in the film. Izzy is having lunch at a hot dog place (Papaya King?). It's crowded, the decor is bright and cheap, it's a place for a quick bite on the run. A woman walks in off the street—we know immediately she's slightly crazy because her makeup is theatrical and over-the-top. She ceremoniously drops a shawl and begins to sing "Some Enchanted Evening".

You remember how that song goes? It's by Rodgers and Hammerstein and appears in the musical South Pacific:

Some enchanted evening
You may see a stranger
You may see a stranger
Across a crowded room
And somehow you know
You know even then
That somewhere you'll see her
Again and again

Some enchanted evening
Someone may be laughing
You may hear her laughing
Across a crowded room
And night after night
As strange as it seems
The sound of her laughter
Will sing in your dreams

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try

Some enchanted evening
When you find your true love
When you feel her call you
Across a crowded room
Then fly to her side
And make her your own
Or all through your life you
May dream all alone

Once you have found her
Never let her go
Once you have found her
Never let her go

This scene is one of the most complex that appears in the movie. On the one hand, it's incredibly funny: the woman singing takes her performance very seriously, she believes she's giving something beautiful to the hot-dog patrons. And she is. On the other hand, she's obviously nutty, the patrons don't know what to make of her and stare at her, dumbfounded. It's one of those fantastic, quintessential New York moments.

More importantly, the woman's performance freezes Izzy. Something about the lyrics, or the woman, speaks to her. In fact, she seems to be singing directly at, and for, Izzy. The performance is at once pitiful and moving, funny and bizarre.

It raises larger questions for the audience: does this romantic schmaltz have relevance for the 80s career woman? Is this model working anymore for women, and if not, what is there to replace it? Isn't the discourse of love-is-everything now out-of-date for career women? And hasn't this sort of thing led to women being incredibly unhappy with their lives?

Another scene shows a salad bar in a grocery store during lunch-time. Each New Yorker moves in slow motion, and the use of music here provides another reflective moment in the film. We see New Yorkers picking over the salad bar, placing food in plastic trays for one. Everyone is separate. Izzy moves among them, and we can think about how her story is just one of many in a large city.

It's not an entirely sad moment, though. It does prompt us to wonder, does Izzy feel sealed off from others, able to see them but not connect, much like the food in her plastic tray? The scene also raises questions about the convenience of modern life and how it also enables continuous separation throughout the working day.

While the music in this scene tells us how to feel, there's reasoning behind it's inclusion in the film. It's important because it gives the movie depth, comments on the single life, questions modernity, and gives the audience a pause before resuming with the story.

Other trends: interior decorating, the literary scene

The Big Chill showcases the glamour of 80s yuppie lifestyle: the Georgian house, the Porche, the sunglasses and high-end sneakers, interior decorating with peach walls, framed art prints, and curved overstuffed sofas. The film is like a moving catalog.

In Crossing Delancey, there's a roach on the wall of Izzy's apartment.

Izzy aspires to a sophisticated—and perhaps more gentile?—lifestyle. She uses the rhetoric of "style" to distance herself from the lower east side and matchmaking. When she first meets Sam she tells him, "This isn't my style," a line that's repeated by Sam with a hint of faint disbelief.

What Izzy is so quick to turn her back on turns out to be not such a bad system afterall. The matchmaking system stands up pretty well against the yuppie dating scene.

What is her style? Literary discussions at the bookstore where she works. These take place after the bookstore is closed, giving them an air of elitism.

While Izzy's interest in a social literary gatherings is admirable, the events are shown to be one-way exercises in ego-worshipping. You may recall that in the 1980s there was a resurgence in bookselling, with literary blockbusters like Bonfire of the Vanities re-energizing the book market. Books were being marketed more aggressively, too. This changing sector is briefly alluded to in the beginning of the film, when the small independently owned bookshop holds a fund-raising party to help fight off chain-store booksellers.

The movie spends part of its time deflating the hype surrounding 80s literary sensations. The famous author Izzy is dazzled by turns out to be a jerk, and the literary gatherings are nothing more than one-way ego massages for the authors (leading to some funny scenes).

Conclusion

The Big Chill tapped into baby boomer nostalgia through it's use of music and college friendships reaffirmed. The movie acted as justification of yuppie lifestyles and values. In this way, it told audiences what they wanted to hear.

Crossing Delancey used the romantic genre to comment on the tension between 80s values and traditional values. It was a reminder not to forget family, religion, and community, nor the useful things that sprang out of these, like matchmaking. It saw cultural hype—such as literary blockbusters—as just that: hype.

Crossing Delancey also slips in subtle acknowledgement of emerging domestic arrangements, e.g., the woman who is raising a child seperately from the father.

I began this series in an attempt to dismantle each film with regards to aging: what elements age a movie while others don't, and why. Crossing Delancey has timeless themes set against a backdrop of 80s trends, issues and anxieties. The Big Chill substitutes this backdrop for the movie itself, so that, with the passing of time, it loses much of its relevancy and weight.

While The Big Chill attempts to address the themes of mourning and grief, it's understanding and handling of these themes is limited and superficial, undermined by the soundtrack and poor characterizations. It's main theme seems to be nostalgia, for a time before professionalism. But it never successfully grapples with this issue, because it doesn't distance itself from the 1980s.

Crossing Delancey distances itself from 80s culture, and that's why it's aged better than The Big Chill.