Like many un-franchisable film genres these days, the adult melodrama is in a steady state of decline. But it wasn’t so long ago that such women-led fare was a reliable theatrical performer. Both Steel Magnolias and Beaches made the top 30 domestic box office list for their year, despite critics largely pinching their noses and dismissing them as “manipulative” and “trite.” Terms of Endearment, which had its U.S. wide release forty years ago this month, remains something of a rarity in that respect. The directing debut of James L. Brooks, who was still mostly known for television at the time, went on to become the second highest grossing film of 1983 with $165 million worldwide and earned 11 Academy Award nominations, winning five.
In the years since, Endearment has become a perennial punchline, especially on sitcoms, which is what makes revisiting it now so refreshing. It is vanishingly rare in the current cinematic climate to see a mother-daughter relationship so fully rendered in all its unpredictable agony and devotion, and characters so fully embodied by such capable actresses. Building from Larry McMurtry’s 1975 source novel, Brooks has a light touch with the material that surely comes from years of working on series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi. The script is an ambitious leap in comparison, but one he felt he had to make. “When I broke into movies, it was hard for anyone who had previously worked in television to break into the movies. It’s easier now, but was almost impossible back then,” he said in 2000.
That Endearment took four years to complete also comes across in the finished product, not in the sense that it feels overworked but lived-in. Even the gauzy cinematography suggests the comforting texture of a hand-me-down. The plot covers three decades in the diverging lives of mother Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) and daughter Emma (Debra Winger), and the two women clearly change in significant ways over that time without the film resorting to creaky old age effects or even much in the way of obvious period markers. It’s as if the world beyond their domestic spheres has little impact on their existence. Brooks’s canvas is thus decidedly small scale, but he makes up for it by coaxing big emotions from his leads.
Aurora’s overbearing form of mothering is established from the start: before the opening credits even roll, she climbs into baby Emma’s crib, high heels and all, because she’s worried her daughter isn’t breathing. She then pinches her until she cries. In quick succession we’re shuffled through Aurora’s early widowhood, Emma’s teenage years, and her hasty marriage to callow college professor Flap (Jeff Daniels), who will prove a disappointment to both women. Brooks paces the events swiftly – one child for Emma soon becomes three, money troubles flare up and fade, extramarital affairs begin and end. Given how much the last forty minutes of the film loom large in the popular imagination, it’s easy to forget that Aurora and Emma spend the majority of the movie apart. But their connection is the beating heart of the film, which is partly what makes that last forty minutes so touching.
Before that, though, Aurora spends a good portion of her time sparring with Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson), the gone-to-seed astronaut playboy who lives next door to her. Garrett, to my immense surprise when I eventually read it, does not figure at all in McMurty’s book; he is a pure Brooks invention, one he originally intended for Burt Reynolds. Reynolds was already committed to another role but his loss is the world’s gain. It’s great fun to watch the yin of MacLaine’s classic Hollywood background crackle against the yang of Nicholson’s more freewheeling style as Garrett slowly breaks down the shellac of Aurora’s Southern belle exterior. In some ways, it was Nicholson’s first true romantic lead; certainly his recent work in The Shining and The Postman Always Rings Twice didn’t suggest a natural affinity for such parts. But Brooks clearly relished having him the role as well, and the two would work together three more times – Garrett’s quip that Aurora “bring[s] out the devil in” him rhymes nicely with the (in)famous “You make me want to be a better man” line in As Good As It Gets. The film’s comically candid attitude towards sex feels true to life, too, as both Aurora and Emma fumble with their suitors’ awkward attempts at intimacy.
It’s because of the care Brooks and his performers take in setting up the idiosyncratic habits and desires of Aurora and Emma that the final act – when Emma’s cancer is discovered and she bravely succumbs to it – works as well as it does. McMurtry’s novel deals with it only glancingly and with a forthrightness that feels deeply Texan, as if her death is simply another tragedy in a long line of them. Such principled dispassion would be difficult to convey on film, and Brooks doesn’t try. While lesser films often use terminal illness as a tool wielded against viewers, Brooks wields it against his characters instead, confronting two distinctly strong women with one of the only things that can truly break them.
Audiences responded in a big way, and a flurry of female-centric tearjerkers followed. Few were able to capture the delicate emotional balance that Terms of Endearment achieved, including the sequel The Evening Star thirteen years later, which Brooks was not involved in. The double-edged sword of creating memorable big characters is that they can sometimes overwhelm a legacy. “Don’t worship me until I’ve earned it,” Aurora scolds an eager Don Juan early in the film. Forty years later, we can finally see her on her own terms.
“Terms of Endearment” is streaming on PlutoTV and Hoopla, and was recently released on 4K UHD Blu-ray by Paramount.
