1980s films revisited: The Big Chill and Crossing Delancey

This is a post on why some movies age better than others. Two movies will be examined: The Big Chill (1983) and Crossing Delancey (1988).

Although separated by a five year gap, this isn't significant as both movies manage to capture the cultural zeitgeist of the time.

In order to find out why one hasn't aged better than the other, I'll examine each in detail. I want to begin with my personal reflections.

Personal remembrances

When I revisited these films, I was stunned by how different they were to how I remembered them. The Big Chill had seemed so adult at the time. What was once sophisticated, complex, and cutting-edge was now surfacey, empty, and dated. With Crossing Delancey, I was struck by how much I had underestimated it: it was a thoroughly enjoyable film, tightly written but not in a hurry, the characters were fantastic, and I didn't really mind that it telegraphed what was going to happen. The point was how it was going to happen.

I suppose if I had to choose one for a time vault, I would pick The Big Chill.

But for a movie night at home with a beer?

Crossing Delancey, definitely.

Overview - similarities and differences

Loosely, both movies examine human relationships and the daunting task of personal self-government. While The Big Chill was an unexpected box-office hit, grossing far more than the producers expected, Crossing Delancey was a more modest, though well-received, hit.

The Big Chill managed to break into mainstream consciousness partly because it incorporates themes appealing to both genders (and the soundtrack - see below). Crossing Delancey is concerned primarily with female subjectivity, and what are traditionally deemed female themes (relationships, romance, love, etc.).

Crossing Delancey centers on a Jewish community in New York, while The Big Chill is decidedly WASPy. For the most part, the characters in the former are struggling economically; and for the most part, the characters in the latter are doing very well, thank you.

Both films are driven by well-written scripts matched by outstanding ensemble casts, and both use humor to lighten the mood. The plots are like sharks that bump into serious subjects, then swerve away to comedy in order to discharge the audience's anxiety.

Lastly, both films prominently feature music. The Big Chill plays Motown hits and other songs from the 1960s such as "The Weight" by The Band. In fact, there was enough music used in the film to fill two albums, and the first album was "among the best selling albums of the year".

Crossing Delancey relies less on music than The Big Chill. It uses shoo-bop harmonization and, in one memorable scene, a Rodgers and Hammerstein song.

1980s trends, anxieties, and obsessions

While watching each film, what struck me was how one had managed to overcome it's quirks from the 80s, while the other was saturated with them to the detriment of story and character.

1980s concerns inform Crossing Delancey, but they do not dominate. They exist more as quirky post-it notes from that decade. The Big Chill takes it too far: 80s trends are an obsession in that movie, overwhelming the plot and characters, and fronting as substance.

Example 1: Babies and the working woman

In The Big Chill, Meg Jones, played by Mary Kay Place, is a successful lawyer who is afraid she's reaching an age where she won't be able to have children. With no suitable marriage partner available, she's investigating other options.

This plotline neatly combines two 80s phenomenon: the "biological clock" meme, and the recent success in the field of in-vitro fertilization.

Meg doesn't want to opt for in-vitro fertilization if she doesn't have to -- she'd rather simply skip the laboratory process by having one of her friends impregnate her. Determining a good candidate in Sam Weber (Tom Berenger), she tells him, "You have good genes." He looks puzzled and slowly looks down at his jeans. [1]

Little moments like this keep the audience from becoming too aware and uncomfortable with the threat to traditional ways of reproducing and living that this medical procedure poses.

Unfortunately, that's about all that character is about: getting pregnant. The complexities of how it feels to be a successful career woman, how she reconciles this with her desire for a baby, and plans on juggling child-rearing and corporate life are shunted aside.

Contrast this with the baby theme that hangs in the air throughout Crossing Delancey. There are several scenes that highlight babies: a Lamaze class files out of a building that Isabelle and her romantic interest enter, some of her friends are having babies (she attends a circumcision), and a guest tells her at the reception afterwards, "When I was her age, I had a husband and two kids, all my life was in order." (Or something to that effect.)

Although we don't know how Isabelle feels about them, it is a constant reminder of what she's turning away from.

During the 80s, if you recall, the media talked extensively about how "working mothers" were changing child-rearing, and whether kids were neglected, women delaying or choosing not to have children, etc.. Crossing Delancey references this without clubbing you over the head: these themes form the backdrop without detracting from the characters or plot.

Example 2: Technology is only as interesting as people's response to it

There are a few scenes in The Big Chill where the characters are playing around with what was then an emerging consumer technology: home video recorders. The characters film themselves and each other, then watch what they've filmed.

Only one scene almost works: when Chloe (Meg Tilly) talks frankly about a mutual friend's suicide, and asks the "interviewer" (William Hurt?) if he's is alright. He's off-camera so we have to imagine what's happening. This set-up challenges the viewer to imagine a side of the character we haven't seen yet.

But this sensitivity is undermined by the way the video camera enforces a reductionist view of another character: Chloe. She's being videotaped doing stretches in a leotard typical of 80s fashion. As the interview proceeds, it's clear that she's being filmed for her body's ability to bend and stretch, and not for what she's saying. It makes her less of a fully rounded character, and more of a sexual object. In an odd way, by the end of the scene, he's more human off-camera than she is on-camera.

For the most part, the video scenes come across as self-indulgent and shallow. [2]

This is how The Big Chill puts gizmos above the storytelling. The phenomenon of new technology -- personal camcorders -- is not more important than progressing the story or our understanding of the characters. The camcorder idea becomes an empty gimmick.

In Crossing Delancey 80s trends are light touches noted in passing: the new craze for jogging, off-the-shoulder tops, hair that the older generation mistakes for -- a mistake. And so forth. These little moments add to the storytelling in Crossing Delancey, but they never dominate or pose as substance.

[Continued in Part 2.]

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Footnotes

[1] Whoever I see this with, this moment always gets a big laugh; of course, it has to do with the "click" that the word-play causes (genes/jeans). But there's something else going on here: the anxiety that if women become economically independent, men may need women more than women need men. Meg Jones is a successful lawyer who can afford to raise a baby on her own. Berenger's character is an actor, a vocation that emphasizes good looks. There's a power reversal here -- she's sizing up him.

[2] Unless the point was to showcase the characters as superficial and shallow, of course. But I don't think this was the case, partly because the rest of the film doesn't support this understanding of the characters. And partly because the monologues being filmed by the characters sets up the expectation that what we will see will reveal more depth to the characters. They don't. They reveal more shallowness.

Images: The Big Chill from Wikipedia; Crossing Delancey from BlockBuster Videos