The Big Chill is a Woody Allen movie with real people and better music.
Larry Kasdan's boomer epic would have no teeth at all without the Motown backbeat, but we hang on to the end even though there's no destination at all.
It always felt like The Big Chill was a peek into Harrison Ford's college reunion and it still feels that way in 2020. We're just hanging out on the Falcon adrift of purpose but with the coffee talk of a jail cell in Rio Bravo. Without the soundtrack the movie would be dead in the water, but the Stones and the Band are just as much a character here as they are in a Scorsese piece, placing us into a time and place not only in history but in the mid-life malaise of the entire crowd.
Are the best days behind or ahead? Nobody here has come to terms with either yet, but it feels in the end as if even though a friend has died, there's a lot of life left to live. Even if Kevin Costner's part was dead in the water, save the cufflinks, the movie may have no purpose, no compass and no plot - it still has a pulse and that's just enough to make it survive.
Larry Kasdan's boomer epic would have no teeth at all without the Motown backbeat, but we hang on to the end even though there's no destination at all.
It always felt like The Big Chill was a peek into Harrison Ford's college reunion and it still feels that way in 2020. We're just hanging out on the Falcon adrift of purpose but with the coffee talk of a jail cell in Rio Bravo. Without the soundtrack the movie would be dead in the water, but the Stones and the Band are just as much a character here as they are in a Scorsese piece, placing us into a time and place not only in history but in the mid-life malaise of the entire crowd.
Are the best days behind or ahead? Nobody here has come to terms with either yet, but it feels in the end as if even though a friend has died, there's a lot of life left to live. Even if Kevin Costner's part was dead in the water, save the cufflinks, the movie may have no purpose, no compass and no plot - it still has a pulse and that's just enough to make it survive.