The Big Chill
Had a delicious dinner – porkchops, scalloped potatoes (from scratch!) and arthichokes – with Will and Marita Saturday night and Marita insisted we watch The Big Chill since Will had never seen it. I love the Big Chill and hadn’t watched it in a while, so was happy to oblige. Now, though I’m sure my parents didn’t let me watch the movie until I was old enough to understand at least some of the very adult concepts in the movie, I did grow up listening to the soundtrack. In my memory, my childhood is scored by that soundtrack and anything Simon & Garfunkel.
It’s only now that I’m really starting to appreciate The Big Chill and all its themes – reflecting back on the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, idealistic college graduate I was long ago, ready to go out and change the world (my 30-year-old self laughs at her and wishes she could tell her to make the money first and save the world second); the frustration of wasting your life pining over and idealizing someone you were never meant to be with in the first place; watching the friends you love, who you thought you’d always be close to, change and slip away; and realizing that the life you imagined for yourself isn’t the one that you’ve arrived at and that the one thing you were always absolutely sure you were meant to be isn’t a definite.
And I found myself identifying with Meg, the successful lawyer who has everything but the one thing she wants – a family. At one point, she is bemoaning the sorry state of the available men, positing:
They’re either married or gay. And if they’re not gay, they’ve just broken up with the most wonderful woman in the world, or they’ve just broken up with a bitch who looks exactly like me. They’re in transition from a monogamous relationship and they need more space. Or they’re tired of space, but they just can’t commit. Or they want to commit, but they’re afraid to get close. They want to get close, you don’t want to get near them.
I don’t know whether to be sad that not much has changed in the 28 years since the movie was made or relieved that I’m not alone and this is the plight of the independent, successful business woman in America.
