Chris Feil's weekly series looks at the use of music in movies
The Big Chill is one of the definitive films about the baby boomer generation, marking their coming of a certain age where life begins to look a lot less like what they were promised. And this is a generation that was promised an awful lot. It’s appropriate then that Lawrence Kasdan packs the film with tunes that contrast a youthful optimism with more complicated tones of soulful longing.
Many of the songs featured in the film would become soundtrack staples to the extent that they became movie cliches. Off-hand you can probably think of a half dozen films that also featured “The Weight” by The Band or “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night. But what The Big Chill got right - and first, mind you - about much of this music is how it was the tapestry of that generation...
It doesn’t feel like merely notable songs from the radio, as the likes of Forrest Gump have treated them. Here it’s the background noise of memory, a lifetime of context and shared experience summoned up with the drop of a record needle. In Kasdan’s hands, the music is both a safety net and a therapist’s couch.
But the soundtrack doesn’t just tie this ensemble to a certain time and place - it also ties them to eachother, and their shared lack of emotional fulfillment. Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is more than just a hip vibe to start the film, or a sharp way to suggest communication between these separate characters the sequence features. The placid camera movement suggests an emotional disassociation that’s complimentary to each character despite their vastly different circumstances. Meanwhile, Gaye’s steady groove moves as decisively and confidently while singing about disappointment, desire, and subdued anger. The interspersed shots of their now dead friend give the sequence and the music an ironic soberness, foretelling the consequence for all this restlessness.
This kind of pop sensibility and mood setting yields eye rolls when it merely borrows a song’s tone to establish its own (think Garden State, Grey's Anatomy, etc.). Kasdan however comes with more ideas and character insight to go along the music’s ability to convey a certain feeling. Like how many of the featured songs became movie cliches, so did this style of musical underscoring. But Kasdan pioneered it here to more layered effect than others, with as much wit to go with the feeling.
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” makes for an obvious underlining of the film’s theme, but in this funeral sequence Kasdan plumbs the song for both its deepest sadness and rebellious joy. We get to see more of each friend’s particular displacement, their generational malaise like different interpretations of the same song - and not unlike the different tones Kasdan highlights within the Rolling Stones classic he uses. The dialogue is funny-sad and revealing in its brevity while the song plays like a stoned Stages of Grief, a fitting jam as this group shambles towards acceptance.
Definitely hokier and worthy of more askance looks is the group dance sequence set to The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg”. In all its “swaying butts in high-waisted pants” glory, it takes us right out of the movie in somewhat cringey fashion. Where previous musical moments immersed us in character-based ennui, this attempt to drop us into their wine-hazy joy is something of a different film less interested in authenticity. More like the kind of film that emulated its musical strategy with lesser intention.
While it doesn’t serve to embody the character’s state of mind, it is kind of like a drunken blur of friendship remembered the morning after. We don’t actually behave like this, but sometimes the fog of memory makes it seem like we did. Ain’t those the ties that actually bind so that we can stand the troubles.
Previous Soundtracking Favorites:
The Bodyguard
Evita
Stop Making Sense
The First Wives Club
Big Little Lies
...all installments can be found here!