Les Copains d'abord

After reading several of the user comments on this movie, it is clear that many people missed quite a bit. Those "funny one-liners" (and there are plenty!) are much more than that: they tell us volumes about the characters. This movie certainly does not spell anything out to the viewer (except, perhaps, the obvious), so you must be able to find the meaning behind the words. If you listen to what the characters are saying, then you can understand their past relationships, their present feelings, which friends have stayed close, etc. Remember, these are old friends: the script is very realistic so the characters are not going to explain every line to one another. I believe to truly enjoy this movie you need to pay close attention to all of the details and understand a bit about the attitudes and ideals of the two eras the movie depicts.

Wonderful, intelligent movie!

A group of seven former college friends gather for a weekend reunion at a South Carolina winter house after the funeral of one of their friends.

In some ways, this film is something like "Secaucus Seven", with various friends who drifted apart getting back together again. These seven had high hopes in the 1960s, but are now becoming disillusioned in the 1970s (with a shoe company named after a Chairman Mao quote and a public defender who has learned that most accused criminals truly are guilty).

Somehow, in the thirty years since this film was released, it has gone under the radar and has been forgotten. Despite many big stars and a notable director (Lawrence Kasdan, a protégé of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg), not to mention a great soundtrack, how has this film become forgotten?

Reunions of former college mates can be an enthusiastic, but also dramatic experience, mainly when you have shared with your now adult friends great ideals in a better and just world, and all those ideals have been abandoned in favour of professional careers and wealthy lives and, moreover, when the only mate who has faced the unfillable gap between the ideal and the real has just committed suicide and thus caused that same reunion.

Single sense of more or less pretended personal self-fulfilment, but hiding a dramatic sense of disillusionment, is rendered through noteworthy dialogues: intelligent, witty, ironical, sensitive and deep. Each protagonist will have to take off his/her mask, and show himself/herself for what he/she is now: the easy and devouring enthusiasm of those, not so distant, at least chronologically, but mentally and emotionally buried times cannot be acted for long. The only form of consolation, a very significant one, actually, is the possibility to share this sense of disillusionment, and the understanding that the only way out of personal dramas is communing with others.

Evidently, the actors, nowadays known as talented performers, but not so famous in 1983, are more than good. Not to mention the soundtrack, which contributes strongly to the emotional impact of the movie and makes one feel like rediscovering the great and out of time hits of the 60's, 70's. A cult and must see movie.

"The Big Chill" is about my peers. When first released in 1983, I, like the characters, was in my early thirties, a former rebellious collegian from the '60s. After a decade in the work-a-day world, being a family man and raising babies, watching "The Big Chill" was like a fantastic time machine and took me back to places long forgotten. It really connected with me on a visceral level and I loved it.

Now, almost twenty years later, I've watched "The Big Chill" again. Same effect? Not exactly, although a lot of this may be due to the effect of viewing any movie a second time. My views of the 60s are not so gilded as they were then either. "The Big Chill" is still a very good movie; you have to love it for the ensemble acting. So many of the actors in the movie went on to have respected careers in the 80s and 90s. It's one of those rare movies like "American Graffiti" and "Diner" that served as a launch pad for acting careers. And the soundtrack is perfect, capturing the breadth of late '60s pop music. I really wish Kasdan had done with these characters, what Updike did with his "Rabbit" novels, that is, show the characters at ten year intervals through their lives.

This is one of the better movies of this type and is highly recommended even for the gen-x'ers.

While channel surfing, saw this movie again tonight, for about the 35th time. What makes this movie great is not the story - hell, there is no story really - but the making of the movie itself. It is the single best combination of acting, film editing, sound track, dialogue, and every other thing that goes into a movie, ever put together. No special effects, no car chases, no suspense, no anything that usaually passes for entertainment. Just excellent film making. Even tonight, I saw yet one more background detail I never noticed before. You have to watch this movie multiple times to appreciate it. Nearly everything that happens early in the movie relates to something that occurs later on. The transitions and foreshadowing, the character relationships, the very words themselves all fit together like no other film ever made. I truly believe that this is a film that should be studied as an example of pure movie making, no less than Citizen Kane. To rate this movie as a 10 is to underrate it. Of course, that is just my opinion.