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Canwest News Service
A friend of mine, let's call her "Hadley Dyer of Toronto, Ont.," told me that she'd seen the Academy Award-winning James L. Brooks movie Terms of Endearment approximately 11 times and that it always made her cry like a stupid, big baby. Now, the problem with writing a column based on the suggestions of friends/readers (there's no distinction in my books, friend/reader. Freader?) is that there's a very good chance that someone's perennial favourite could be some abysmal piece of garbage. This will lower your estimation of them and, when you react negatively towards their precious, dumb movie, their estimation of you will drop as well. It's risky and I'm always terrified of losing a freader.
Luckily for both of us and our fread … ship … Terms of Endearment actually deserved the 1983 best-picture Oscar that it received from the hit-or-miss Academy. As we sat and watched it — Hadley for the 12th time and I for the first — I was completely sucked in, yet slightly confused as to what I was watching. It seemed straightforward enough as the movie depicted the relationship between a mother, played by Shirley Maclaine, and her daughter, played by Debra Winger, taking place over several years of their lives. The mother's inability to properly convey her "terms" of "endearment" for her daughter (see what I did there?) and potential love interests like Jack Nicholson and, um, Danny DeVito (the '80s were a weird time) takes the spotlight, mostly because of Maclaine's terrifically nuanced performance as the matriarch, Aurora Greenwood. Like I said, straightforward stuff. So why was I so puzzled?
Days later when I checked the movie's Wikipedia entry (for the director's name! Please don't take my responsible journalist card away from me!) it said, " Terms of Endearment is a 1983 romantic comedy-drama film." That's right. Romantic comedy-drama. Which, of course, was true, but an unwieldly category for shelving in a Blockbuster. There's not really a proper classification for this type of movie — one that works at depicting relationships naturally, as complex things filled with love and humour and sadness and anger. Which is what had me confused while watching it. Films are usually so easily pinned down because they exist as strange extremes. That movie where someone's taking down that big tobacco-oil corporation because it gave their kid some sort of super-cancer is a drama. That movie where a ragtag group of crude dudes try to save their favourite bar from foreclosure by winning the farting tournament is a comedy. See? Easy!
So, how to define a movie that's, well, a bunch of stuff ? It's a tearjerker, that's for sure. But people's reasons for crying at this flick vary, as I noticed halfway through when Hadley Dyer of Toronto, Ont., and I started tearing up at a scene which had nothing to do with Debra Winger's terminal cancer (which is a certified sobbing plot point). Instead, it was a tender scene between Maclaine and Nicholson, who plays a womanizing former astronaut (with the kind of sleaziness one would expect from a Jack Nicholson impersonator).
After 11 viewings, it was the first time Hadley had cried at that scene, which goes to show you that it's not only a varied movie in terms of genre, but a varied one in terms of tearjerking too. And, as Debra Winger's cancer outcome hurtled at us, I reached for the room light and turned it off, not so I could make a move on my movie date (I'm not into crying babies), but so she would be spared the wretched, pained faces I make when I sob uncontrollably. The mutual respect that I feared would be lost if the movie was terrible was now ironically in danger because I liked it too much and have proven myself to be a blubbering man-child that can't control his emotions. But I have no control over that; it's just life.
Which is what this movie is as well: just life. It's not a romantic comedy-drama or any other genre word that can be added to its ungainly category. The local video shoppe should take a cue from this and make a section for these movies simply called "Life:" a catch-all for the non-farting, non-sci-ficourtroom dramas that bare little to no resemblance of the lives of me and my family and friends. So I can know to avoid them when I don't want my family and friends to catch a glimpse of me in the dark, sobbing into a tissue as Debra Winger tells her kids that "mommy's not going to get better." Life!
I'm going to go now and edit that Wikipedia page.
Terms of Endearment: Four tears
smurray@nationalpost.com
