my favorite movie of 1983:

The Big Chill

(Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Meg Tilly, Mary Kay Place, Tom Berenger, JoBeth Williams. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan.)

After a man commits suicide, his old college friends and his girlfriend stay in the same house together and try to figure out their lives. This loosely structured ensemble dramedy is set to a great soundtrack that includes Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Three Dog Night, and the Rolling Stones.

Here’s a Slate piece on “The Big Chill and the enduring power of quarter-life crisis movies.” Also, “you no longer have to hate The Big Chill.” (2016 Medium article.)

Some of the standout actors are Glenn Close, the only person nominated for an Oscar for acting in The Big Chill; William Hurt, as a Vietnam veteran weighed down by personal problems such as impotence; Meg Tilly, as the dead man’s girlfriend, who seems youthfully naive and out of place in the group; and Jeff Goldblum, who tells one of his friends about his theory of ethics in an old videotape they’re watching (along with Hurt and Tilly’s characters):

Look, nobody thinks they’re a bad person. I’m not even claiming that people always think they’re doing the right thing. They may know that they’re doing something dishonest or insensitive or manipulative, but they almost always think there’s a good reason for doing it. … In addition, you instantly come up against a question of style. My style may be too direct: perhaps, given my style, I seem more nakedly opportunistic or jerky. … But really all that’s happening is I’m trying to get what I want, which is what everybody does. It’s just that some of their styles are so warm or charming … you don’t realize that they’re just trying to get what they want. So you see, my transparent efforts are, in a way, much more honest and admirable.

Why is it what you just said strikes me as a massive rationalization?

Don’t knock rationalization! Where would we be without it? I don’t know anyone who’d get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations! They’re more important than sex.

Aw, come on, nothing’s more important than sex!

Oh yeah? You ever gone a week without a rationalization?

Stream it on the Criterion Channel (with bonus features), Amazon Prime, or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.