720 The Big Chill

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
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Re: 720 The Big Chill

#76 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Aug 21, 2016 8:48 pm

domino harvey wrote:By no stretch of the imagination could I be called a fan of Dunham, but I think we can refrain from calling her names. I have no idea what being dog food even means, but I doubt it's anything good
Absolute agreement. I've never been a fan either but we can all express those sentiments without resorting to low insults.

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senseabove
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am

Re: 720 The Big Chill

#77 Post by senseabove » Fri Jul 16, 2021 2:57 am

Watched this tonight after a friend spoke fondly of it recently and I'm overall pretty cool on it—it was very much not what I was expecting, far more subdued than than my vague apprehension of it as a Cultural Touchstone prepared me for, so it may fare better on a rewatch—but I thought William Hurt gave a particularly good turn. My first feeling of why that is, though, is that he dug more out his role amongst a cluster of pretty thinly-written characters being ponderous about Big Issues by bringing more than is explicitly written to his character—namely, it feels like he's the only one on either side of the camera who realizes his character is not entirely straight and might have been in love with Alex. Am I just being willfully queer-eyed? I honestly thought he was being explicitly typed as "80s gay" in the first twenty minutes until the revelation about what happened in Vietnam—which is of course, historically, a cognate for homosexuality, but it still feels like everyone other than Hurt was actively avoiding exploring that possibility.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: 720 The Big Chill

#78 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:50 am

Interesting reading, though I think what you’re picking up on is far more broad than that. I’ve always felt Hurt perfectly captures the characteristics of a self-destructive depressant who, regardless of how ‘self-aware’ he may be, is constrained into this Sisyphean cycle by his feelings of self-worth against a social environment that is more superficial, and thus makes him feel outcasted by the nature of existing next to those who can hide their pain more easily. I adore the film but I think you’re right on the money that he’s more complex than the other characters from our vantage point because of these reasons. He’s an addict, and not because of pleasure but to bury agony; the poster-character for the self-medication hypothesis.

In the spirit of the Movies Change Our Lives ethos, I’ve never related to a character as much as I did to Hurt’s in this film when I was a kid growing up. I had yet to even try substances (the addiction component and his profession in the psych field are uncanny details in hindsight) but his clear feelings of pain barely hidden within behaviors self-destructively ostracizing himself from social interactions due to negative core beliefs was something I just identified with infinitely. I don’t know how to express my reading of this character properly, and it’s certainly bound to my subjective identification forever, but I think sexuality has less to do with it than the feeling that there’s a glass wall between you and everyone you’re with, regardless of how much positive social feedback you’re getting- and if you don’t know that feeling, I don’t know how to describe it another way. However it would make sense that each viewer would take this broad self-alienation and project specifics onto it that revolve around the root energy.

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senseabove
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am

Re: 720 The Big Chill

#79 Post by senseabove » Fri Jul 16, 2021 3:49 pm

Yeah, I could certainly see that being the case, that it's is the broadness of his portrayal that I'm registering, relating his discontentment to my own past experiences of that "glass wall;" and Hurt's ability to add more nuance to the literally unspeakable causes for his isolation and self-destruction beyond what the screenwriters were explicit about makes that discontentment more multivalent. I'm just surprised that after decades of "queering" films, I'm not finding any other discussion of the possibility in a film I had the impression was a Significant At the Time movie, when there seem to be so many minor notes that lend themselves to that interpretation: his empathy for the fellow misfit Alex that none of the other men share, his platonic physical affection with Meg and apparently unique absence of any sexual history with any of the women in the group, a medical condition that's a not exactly subtle code for homosexuality... All of them have plausible deniability, but it doesn't take much of a push.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: 720 The Big Chill

#80 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jul 16, 2021 5:06 pm

I obviously I haven't seen the film as recently as you (though I have seen it many, many times) but I'm almost certain that it's implied that Hurt's character bedded most of the women in the group at one point or another back in college, which makes his injury and current aloofness more jarring considering his previous intimacy with the group members on not only an emotional level but a physical one. I think this information is passed along subtly in conversations. If I recall correctly, while Tom Berenger and JoBeth Williams talk about why they didn't consummate their relationship at certain points, they casually mention that at one stage she was dating Nick. I also believe that one of the reasons Meg chooses Nick (as she indicates to Sarah) is that they had sexual chemistry back in college, which is again why his platonic arms-length response is so confounding to her.

Nick's empathy for Alex is as simple (and implicitly complex) as him having a deep understanding of the pain Alex was going through. Nobody in the group seemed to really understand how badly he was hurting, but Hurt 'gets' it without the necessity of having kept in touch; he's not baffled by the idea that observable discernment of symptoms isn't going to indicate one's internal mental state.

Nick's platonic stance towards Meg is emblematic of his acceptance around his condition. He's not conflicted about his impotence, but his surrender definitely isn't a positive one, as it bled into a cynicism triggering him to give up on life in many facets. Nick's interest in Chloe is also sourced in her being a bit of a quirky social outcast who doesn't 'fit in' to the group and is comfortable being her true self. He can understand how a self-diagnosed outcast like Alex (or those of us who inherently feel like there's a wall of glass between us and the world) would be attracted to her as a partner on a non-sexual level of support and intimacy, and he feels similarly drawn to her as someone who may help him unlock his own capacity to be more honest with himself.

I see the end as a very positive one- albeit deliberately ambiguous given Nick's similarities with Alex, and Nick taking his place in a literal way- because Nick is aware of what he's doing, and while it might not 'work' to restore his mental health, he and Harold and Sarah can appreciate that it's the best option given the current circumstances. Nick is inspired to reframe his surrender into an opportunity to find purpose and meaning again, and he's self-aware enough about his kinship to Alex and Alex's inability to maintain his course on this path to temper his expectations, which just might be his saving grace. I also see Nick as having an obvious deep understanding of his behaviors of concern, antecedents, and triggers- not only from a psych background but in how he engages with the world. So there's hope that even though Nick feels similarly broken to Alex, he may very well possess the skills to overcome his malaise. The protective factors are strong.
Last edited by therewillbeblus on Mon Jul 19, 2021 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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senseabove
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am

Re: 720 The Big Chill

#81 Post by senseabove » Mon Jul 19, 2021 4:28 pm

But you've definitely seen it more than my once! It does always take a whole minute for me to put the names to the faces in these kinds of ensemble films, so it's entirely probable I missed those less-than-overt hints of "Nick's" prior in-group womanizing in the early parts.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 720 The Big Chill

#82 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:17 pm

Your singling out of William Hurt's performance amongst the rest of the crew is an interesting trend I've noticed from most viewers (and certainly one that I share personally), and it got me thinking about why this film remains an all-time favorite for me despite the admission that I find most of the drama merely agreeable outside of Hurt's emotionally arresting role. It's impossible for me to be subjective here, but this notice prompted me to realize that I've always seen The Big Chill as William Hurt, or Nick’s, movie. Obviously it's objectively an ensemble piece, where other characters and their feelings and relationships matter, but I also think it's pretty clear that Kasdan has the greatest interest in Nick, and establishes many of the others to help facilitate this disconnect from meaningful relationships and detail his outcasting status.

I'm sure a piece of this is my own projection, for Nick is existing on one extreme end of the spectrum while the other characters experience a similar degree of existential concern- more over the prognosis that detachment fatally occurs with our own evolution across time and space, as we gain distance from those signifiers, including people, that we once shared a wavelength with. Yet Nick still appears to be at the forefront of Kasdan's curiosity and compassion, as a man who is also coping with these more universally-relatable symptoms from this stage of life, but its distress is secondary next to the introverted suffering he's experiencing on a more individualized psychological level.

However, there is a twist to this concept of Nick as the 'main' focus of the film: Nick is not positioned as a glorified martyr as the central character, but instead as a part of the collective sharing screen time and narrative space. Kasdan both romanticizes and de-romanticizes his psychological struggles. For the romanticization, I get a very similar feeling of validation from the way Kasdan frames Nick as I do from my reading of Tarantino's empathy toward Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time.. in Hollywood, or the confidential gazes we get into Casey Affleck's loneliness in Manchester by the Sea. These are intimate conditions that are only possible in the movies, artificial interventions of empathic reinforcement for our identification with affirmations of worth, that are notably absent in reality, as the neutral world inherently inhibits such a partial lean into our value with greater attention than any other person.

So then comes the de-romanticization effect: Since Nick is only situated as an equal role of this group in actuality, Kasdan clarifies that although his pain matters, these friends of his aren’t going to cater to his problems in an overly dramatized manner, and nor will the narrative as a whole. As the Bard wrote (and AA and other 12-step fellowships republished as a key quote for finding humility and contesting with a higher power against your own solipsistic thinking), "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Thus our narrative breaks from Nick -as well as the juxtaposition between our more objective vantage points in observing Nick's unglamorous role within the group interspersed with the more subjective, closer and affectionate moments Kasdan grants us with him- help us to comprehend, through refinement of our expectations, that while Nick may be the center of the film in many respects to the viewer's enigmatic magnetism, he’s only peripherally central based on our attraction. The humility of being merely a player amongst the rest consciously dilutes the melodramatic pity most films “about” these characters would offer.

So yeah, I think I choose to view the film as an elaborate strategy that capitalizes on narrative outreach in the service of both communing with these intentionally broad markers of recognizable traits for those of us who have a strong 'broken' part, and also reminding us of our insignificance with care. Kasdan validates Nick's struggles with indirect cinematic sympathy but also keeps him right-sized to aid him from drowning in self-pity. It's a near-impossible balance for most films to pull off, but this film nails it- precisely because it operates as a generous distribution of affection for its principals. Nobody is superiorly special, but everyone is dignified as having their own special experience navigating life crises.

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