as the dvd was loading, i pulled up the film's wikipedia page, just for curiosity's sake, to learn that the film really did earn its quasi-mythic status, winning 5 oscars (including best picture) and 4 golden globes. it was this mystique around the film that prompted me to watch it in the first place. reading the sleeve's back cover - and mistakenly reducing the film to "romantic comedy" - caused me some concern... concern that slowly but steadily waned over the film's 131 minutes. and i'm glad that i mistook this film as just another "romance" film because its deviations from this idea are what provide my appreciation of it, and my interest in watching it again.
growing up in the 90's, we were all inundated with sleepless in seattle-type films - i.e. those in which a couple either by some unavoidable circumstance can't get together (but desperately want to) until the final, breathtaking moment... or, they only realize that they're perfect for each other at the last second. (i'll admit that my definition of "romance" here is very hanks-ryan centric, but other examples fall into this structural category, even if only roughly.) terms of endearment, though, works the opposite way: emma (winger) and flap (daniels) get married immediately. thus, the conflict of the film is not the sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic search for one's "true love,", but the grim reality of a marriage made perhaps too hastily. it becomes clear very quickly that emma and flap are unhappy in their marriage. infidelity is rampant in this story, to the extent that we easily sympathize with a wife who cheats on her husband (because we also suspect, and later learn, that the husband is at least ready to cheat on her, as well, in a weird moment of ambivalent absolution for emma). in this sense, marriage is not the destination of romance here... instead, romance is everything that marriage cannot contain.
put another way, this film is anti-romantic (noting that the film retains the "romantic-comedy-drama" label in most of its references). the characters are off-beat, somewhat perpendicular to the story: emma's relationship with her mother, aurora (maclaine), is strikingly candid and repressed, smooth and abrasive simultaneously. every major character exhibits severe mood-swings, and at times the failures of these relationships, which comprise the marrow of the plot, seem inconsequential (in fact totally inconsequential by the film's end). in other words, this seems like a very complex depiction of people who are depressed and refuse to acknowledge their depression - not the romanticization of "true love" bringing people together, putting together the broken pieces of their shattered lives. here, love tears these people apart, and to me that's satisfying. maybe i'm just a dark soul.
often, anti-romantic aligns with "realistic," not working within straightforward structures of right and wrong, not idealistic, not fanciful. i'm not sure that this applies to terms of endearment, though. technically speaking, the editing and narrative progression are both very jerky, jarring, and without smooth transition, not like our own everyday experience of time at all: a year will pass by in a second without warning. and the characters are not "realistic" in the generic sense of the term, not really fitting what is deemed "normal," "well-balanced" individuals. in some sense, they're too stereotypical to be realistic, almost surreal, dream-like, especially where some of the dialogue is concerned.
in a way, then, maybe terms of endearment is the romantic comedy taken to its (il)logical conclusion... what happens after the daughter defies her mother's warnings and marries the man she loves (at least for now) madly and deeply anyway. with this in mind, the title makes sense to me: if we think of a "term of endearment" as a figure of speech that has become common - so common that it's pushed almost to the point of meaninglessness - then the film reflects this by showing how "romance" can devolve into hollow, meaningless, everyday talk. i'm thinking now of a moment that seems more significant to me - when aurora finally summons the courage to tell garret (nicholson) that she loves him, something she hasn't said to anyone in decades. garret, first dismissing the comment and then asked for his reaction, responds: "i'll i've got is my stock answer: i love ya, too, kid." the "kid" echoes humphrey bogart's famous farewell to ingrid bergman in casablanca, maybe remembered as one of the most romantic lines in all of cinema. here, it's just a "stock answer," just another term of endearment.
what i haven't talked about here is the film's tricky thoughts on sexuality: on one level, it seems to make a woman's happiness contingent on the success or failure of her heterosexual marriage, her relationship with a man. in other words, the film takes for granted that a failed marriage is a traumatic thing (maybe for some it isn't), that monogamy is "right" by setting infidelity as a central point of conflict. these are both western, heteronormative ideas. this is complicated, however, since emma is clearly in a much deeper, much more meaningful - because it is such a complex - relationship with her mother. also, by the end of the film, the icon of heteronormativity - the nuclear family - is shattered, while the film still ends on an optimistic note (and ironically at that... the final scene, well... without spoiling anything... does not take place in a happy setting).
all-in-all, there is almost nothing simple about this film. i'll watch it again, to see what else is there to pick up on.
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