An aging radical’s suicide reunites seven of his college cohorts to mourn and reflect on the gap between their youthful ideals and their middle-aged conformity.

The logline seems to me to be more of a statement of?the?theme because I don’t see any one character who dominates/drives the story. ?Most of the characters have a particular objective goal going into the reunion. ?Even those who seemingly don’t complement the overall theme.

Anyway, it’s a classic ensemble film, ?one that came out at the right time, with a great title, a great cast, and the memorable music that captured the zeitgeist of the early 80’s.

No doubt, the characters are rationalizing how they’ve compromised their youthful idealism.

There was ?movie that predated “The Big Chill” and that is “The Return of the Secaucus Seven” made in 1979 by John Sayles that explored the same theme. ?Sayle’s movie is about a holiday reunion of ?7 friends, who 10 years earlier as radical college students, ?were arrested on their way to a protest in Washington DC. ?Some say Sayle’s movie served as the inspiration for Lawrence Kasdan to write “The Big Chill”.

I don’t know about that but both writers were obviously attuned to the emerging zeitgeist of the Baby Boomer generation in the United States, the realization that they had ?been “co-opted” by the system.

However, I’m not sure I would use the phrase “must help each other”. ? What are the stakes? ?What would have happened if they had failed to buy into their own rationalizations? ?Would they have committed collective suicide in sympathy and empathy for their dead comrade? ?Not a chance. ?Would they have jettison their material success and re-committed to a life of radical struggle for social justice? ?Not a chance.

Come to think about it, there’s nothing much at stake other than the chagrin of confessing some unpleasant realities about themselves and and the world. ?They mourn the death of their idealism and go living their lives of non-radical conformity, taking comfort in the?affluent?lifestyle their conformity affords them.

But in that respect, the movie was in tune with the temper of the times. ? Certainly there was a large audience of aging Boomers who could ?identify with their midlife predicament. ?Good enough to make the movie a box-office hit.

One thing I think this film does particularly well is that everyone in the ensemble has a common bond, a shared past, ?their radical days in college. ?And all the individual story threads are triggered by the same inciting incident, the death of their friend. ?There is an underlying unity to the diverse characters and story lines.