The Big Chill (film)


The Big Chill is a 1983 American comedy-drama film directed by Lawrence Kasdan, starring Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams. The plot focuses on a group of baby boomers who attended the University of Michigan, reuniting after 15 years when their friend Alex commits suicide. Kevin Costner was cast as Alex, but all scenes showing his face were cut. It was filmed in Beaufort, South Carolina.
The soundtrack features soul, R&B, and pop-rock music from the 1960s and 1970s, including tracks by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Rolling Stones, and Three Dog Night.
The Big Chill was adapted for television as the short-lived series Hometown. Later, it influenced the TV series thirtysomething.

Plot

Harold Cooper is bathing his young son when his wife, Dr. Sarah Cooper, receives a phone call at their Richmond home telling her that their friend Alex, who had been staying at their vacation home in South Carolina, has committed suicide.
At the funeral, Harold and Sarah are reunited with college friends from the University of Michigan. They include Sam, a television actor; Meg, a real estate attorney in Atlanta; Michael, a journalist for People; Nick, a Vietnam vet and former radio host; Karen, a housewife from suburban Detroit who's unhappy in her marriage to her advertising executive husband, Richard. Also present is Chloe, Alex's young girlfriend.
After the burial, everyone goes to Harold and Sarah's vacation house, where they stay for the weekend. During the first night, a bat flies into the attic while Meg and Nick are getting reacquainted. Sam later finds Nick watching television, and they briefly talk about Karen. They go into the kitchen and find Richard making a sandwich, and the three have a discussion about responsibility and adulthood. Richard states, "Nobody said it was going to be fun. At least, nobody said it to me."
The next morning Harold and Nick go jogging. Harold tells Nick that his company is about to be bought out by a large corporation, and he's going to be rich. Harold confides in Nick that Sarah and Alex had an affair five years earlier. Nick comforts him by saying "She didn't marry Alex."
Richard returns home to look after his kids, but Karen decides to stay in South Carolina for the weekend. Nick, Harold, Michael, and Chloe go for a drive, while Sam and Karen go shopping. Meg reveals to Sarah that she wants to have a child, and that she is going to ask Sam to be the father, knowing that Nick can't. Out in the country, Harold listens to Michael's plans to buy a nightclub. Chloe takes Nick to the abandoned house that she and Alex were going to renovate. She tells him that he reminds her of Alex, to which Nick replies "I ain't him."
During dinner, Sarah starts tearing up over Alex as the group talks about him. Harold puts a record on the stereo, and everyone dances while cleaning up. While the others sit around and smoke marijuana, Meg asks Sam to father her baby, but he declines.
The next morning Nick, Sam, and Harold go jogging, and the subject of Alex's suicide comes up again. Harold's surprise arrives: sneakers for everyone to wear during the upcoming Michigan football game. The group, minus Nick, watches the game on TV, and Sarah tells Karen about her brief affair with Alex and how it affected their friendship.
During the game, Michael offers to father Meg's child, alluding to the fact that they had sex in college. At halftime, Chloe, Sam, Harold, and Michael go outside to play touch football. Nick returns, followed by a police car. The officer says that Nick ran a red light, but says that he will drop the charges if Sam would hop into Nick's Porsche 911 as his TV character, J.T. Lancer, always does. Sam is unsuccessful and hurts himself, but the officer drops the charges anyway.
Karen later tells Sam that she loves him, wants to leave Richard and live with Sam and her two sons. When they kiss, Sam pulls away and tells Karen not to leave Richard. He confesses that it was "boredom" that caused his own marriage to fail, and he doesn't want her to make the same mistake. Karen feels misled and storms into the house.
Harold is on the phone with his daughter, Molly, and lets Meg talk to her. Observing their interaction on the phone, Sarah decides to let Harold impregnate Meg, but does not tell him yet.
The group once again discusses Alex. Nick says "Alex died for most of us a long time ago," but Sam disagrees and leaves. Karen follows him, and the two have sex outside. Sarah tells Harold about Meg's situation, and Chloe and Nick go to bed together. Meg and Harold then have sex, and Michael and Sarah jokingly interview each other with a video camera.
In the morning while Karen is packing, she tells Sam that she has decided to stay with Richard. At breakfast, Harold reveals that Nick and Chloe will be staying so they can renovate the old abandoned house. Sam and Nick then make up from their argument the previous night. Nick gives Michael an old clipping of an article he had written about Alex. Michael states, tongue in cheek, "Sarah, Harold. We took a secret vote. We're not leaving. We're never leaving," and they all laugh.

Cast

Production

Jobeth Williams later recalled a scene was shot which flashbacked to the characters in 1968. "It was just wonderful to shoot," she said. "They rented this big house in Atlanta and installed bead curtains, rock posters, incense, 1968 Life magazines - it was a real time warp." Williams says in the scene her character was living with William Hurts' character and ignoring Tom Berenger. There was also the Alex character, played by Kevin Costner, "looking like a scruffy James Dean. That turned out to be the problem...Nobody could live up to that role after the build-up through the film, and audiences said they didn't want to see anybody try. So the last 10 minutes of the film were just cut out."

Reception

Critical response

Richard Corliss of Time described The Big Chill as a "funny and ferociously smart movie," stating:
Vincent Canby of The New York Times argued that the film is a "very accomplished, serious comedy" and an "unusually good choice to open this year's in that it represents the best of mainstream American film making."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half stars out of four, and wrote "The Big Chill is a splendid technical exercise. It has all the right moves. It knows all the right words. Its characters have all the right clothes, expressions, fears, lusts and ambitions. But there's no payoff and it doesn't lead anywhere. I thought at first that was a weakness of the movie. There also is the possibility that it's the movie's message."
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 68% based on reviews from 38 critics, with an average rating of 6.19/10. The site's critical consensus reads "The Big Chill captures a generation's growing ennui with a terrific cast, a handful of perceptive insights, and one of the decade's best film soundtracks". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100 based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Accolades

The Big Chill won two major awards:
It was nominated for three Oscars:
Other nominations include:
In 2004, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" finished #94 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs poll.

In popular culture

The film was parodied by T. Coraghessan Boyle in his short story The Little Chill. The story begins "Hal had known Rob and Irene, Jill, Harvey, Tottle, and Pesky since elementary school, and they were all 40 going on 60."

The movie is mentioned by Abed in the first episode of the sixth season of TV show Community.

Soundtrack

Ten of the songs from the film were released on the soundtrack album, with four additional songs made available on the CD. The remainder of the film's songs were released in 1984 on a second soundtrack album.
In 1998, both albums were re-mastered, the first without the four additional CD tracks, which had also appeared on More Songs and were left there. In 2004, Hip-O Records released a Deluxe edition, containing not only sixteen of the eighteen songs from the film, but three additional film instrumentals. A second "music of a generation" disc of nineteen additional tracks was included as well, some of which had appeared both on the original soundtrack and the More Songs release.

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

YearChartPosition
1983Billboard Black Albums40
1983The Billboard 20017

OrganizationLevelDate
RIAA – USAGoldDecember 12, 1983
RIAA – USAPlatinumMarch 29, 1984
RIAA – USADouble PlatinumSeptember 27, 1985
RIAA – USA4x PlatinumJuly 20, 1998
RIAA – USA6x PlatinumOctober 15, 1998