Terms of Endearment

Less than three weeks ago, I “celebrated” my 50th birthday. I use quotation marks there because the reality is I don’t really celebrate birthdays, especially depressing ones like the big 5-0. My wife hates that because she wants to dote on me on these occasions and celebrate them while I have a more fatalistic view on things. “What’s so great about not having died,” I say, trying to put a humorous spin on a concept that she doesn’t fully understand about me. My mother adds her own saying, “It’s better than the alternative,” which is hard to argue with until you try to stand up after sitting for a while and realize that the muscles don’t want to cooperate the way they did when you were twenty. Still, I have a semblance of my health intact, which is more than some people can say. 

Chile actor George Miller “Huckleberry” Fox, who played Teddy Horton, the oldest son in Terms of Endearment, for instance, died less than two years ago, just after his 50th. He had cancer. As I was reading that, I thought about Debra Winger, who played his mother, and how she is still alive and well, and that brought me full circle back to Terms of Endearment and her and Shirley MacLaine. I thought of that ending and how life can sometimes take away the young while the older stay behind and find ways to cope with that loss. I think of an elderly woman in a book I once read who laments that no parent should have to bury their own child, and I think about my own children, all of whom have reached adulthood, and how I would react if one of them had a terminal disease and I had to go through losing them. As I write this, mere minutes after the credits started rolling on this film, I am in a mood, thinking about death and life and the stuff that happens in between. Perhaps that is what producer/writer/director James L. Brooks ultimately intended. 

He catches you off guard with this, too, if you haven’t read the original Larry McMurtry novel or know about the ending in advance. We start out seeing Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine), recently widowed and raising her daughter while keeping potential suitors at arm’s length. She is the kind of mother who doesn’t feel comfortable unless she’s needed, waking her infant daughter, Emma, because the silence bothers her. As Emma (Debra Winger) grows, Aurora cannot deal with being needed less, and their relationship, while close, is a bit antagonistic, too. When Emma marries Flap Horton (Jeff Daniels), Aurora is so against the marriage, viewing him as unsuitable for her daughter, that she is uninvited from the ceremony. When he takes a job nearly 1,000 miles away and moves the family, Aurora finds herself really alone for the first time in years. 

Here the story splits in two. On the one path, we follow Emma and Flap as they have children, struggle financially, and deal with his penchant to chase after his female students. She starts out happy, following her husband to Des Moines, where he takes a job teaching college. Despite being at odds with her mother, the two keep close ties, talking on the phone all the time while Emma pushes her to get back out into the dating world while she still can. Meanwhile, Flap has been coming home late far too often, leading Emma to accuse him of having an affair. Eventually, she overhears him and one of his students, confirming her suspicions. She has also started seeing someone, Sam (John Lithgow), a married man whose wife has a serious medical condition that has prevented them from any intimacy. This relationship provides some comfort to the two of them but is ultimately shallow and ends far too abruptly.

On the other path is Aurora dealing with her loneliness by eventually pursuing a relationship with her philandering neighbor, retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson). They have been neighbors for years, and she always sees him drunk and out with women way younger than he is. When he invites her to lunch, she initially turns him down. But eventually, she takes him up on that offer, and the two begin their own kind of affair. But he isn’t looking for anything permanent, though he does care for her in his own way. 

These two stories converge again once Emma discovers that she has cancer. At this point, Flap has taken a new position in Nebraska—following one of his female students there—and Emma elects to accompany him  rather than break up the family. Her cancer diagnosis brings Aurora, who, disdain aside, stays by her son-in-law’s side while comforting her daughter as difficult decisions have to be made about who will be taking care of the three children once Emma is gone. 

James L. Brooks is one of those writer/directors that really has a pulse on humanity. Things are not black and white in the real world, and sometimes people do bad things without necessarily being bad people. Bad things happen to good people, too, and, even though a character dying from cancer isn’t the most original concept, it is so well done here that we forget this is a work of fiction. How he handles this part of the story is absolutely brilliant, including the decision to not have the cliché’d scene of the dying character expiring on-screen, their dying words spoken moments before their final breath. Instead, she dies in her sleep, her husband and mother sleeping in chairs in the hospital next to her bed, unaware that it has happened until a nurse comes in and wakes them up to break the news. This is far more effective and allows MacLaine and Daniels to express a myriad of emotions beyond just grief. 

We see those mixed emotions on Aurora’s face, too, as she exclaims “somehow I thought when she finally went that it would be a relief.” It is never so simple as that. Relief may be there in the mix, especially after a long and debilitating illness, but it is shrouded by grief. This simple, poignant statement brings it all together as Aurora embraces the son-in-law that she never really warmed up to. Her character goes through the most growth over the course of the movie. It’s fascinating seeing her developing relationship with Garrett, especially when he comes to see her in Nebraska after Emma is hospitalized. She tells him that she loves him, something that would have never happened earlier in the film. He, of course, tries to get away unscathed, but she calls him back to not only confront him but also reaffirm that she actually made that leap.

This is the kind of film that actors jump at the opportunity to be in because it allows them to really tackle difficult material and can lead to awards and further opportunities. Four of the main cast would be honored with Academy Award nominations; two would win the award while Debra Winger lost out to her co-star Shirley MacLaine, both nominated in the same category, and John Lithgow likewise losing for the same reason to Jack Nicholson. Had they placed everyone in separate categories, all four might have taken home statues that night. The odd-man-out is Jeff Daniels playing Flap. Jeff really is the odd-man-out, too. He is so stiff and emotionless in this film that we never have much sympathy for him. Adding in his infidelities, we just don’t care that he is widowed in the end. Look at that scene at Emma’s deathbed and compare what he is doing to what Shirley MacLaine is doing. He stands there looking at his deceased wife, looking like he is disinterested. There is underplaying the emotion and then there is what Jeff is doing here. 

I am a sap for tragedies, especially when they are done well. James L. Brooks knows how to do play that note to maximum effect. This film won Best Picture at the 1984 Academy Awards against three other films that also were about death. The Big Chill was about the death of a friend bringing people together, Tender Mercies sees the main character’s daughter killed in a senseless accident, and The Dresser ends with the death of a celebrated stage actor, moments after his final performance. Even The Right Stuff has mortality as a theme with the opening focusing on the fatality rate of test pilots. It was apparently a year for somberness at the movies. 

But Terms of Endearment is also about life and love. It’s about finding happiness through companionship. Emma finds it for a time with Sam, a kind man who is also looking for some comfort and companionship. It’s frustrating that their story ends so abruptly with no real resolution. It’s also understandable, though, as his situation at home wouldn’t have allowed them to be together for long. It’s hard to get away with playing an adulterer, but John Lithgow manages to do just that and yet stay sympathetic. As for Emma, we cannot condone her actions, either, but she was already being cheated on herself, so we can understand it. Ultimately, though, this is about the relationship between Aurora and Emma, a relationship that seems antagonistic yet is filled with the kind of love that only develops between a mother and her daughter. They may fight a lot, but it’s telling that when they are hugging, Emma is usually the last one to let go.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: James L. Brooks (won)

Best Director: James L. Brooks (won)

Best Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium: James L. Brooks (won)

Best Actress: Debra Winger

Best Actress: Shirley MacLaine (won)

Best Supporting Actor: Jack Nicholson (won)

Best Supporting Actor: John Lithgow (won)

Best Art Direction: Polly Platt, Harold Michelson, Tom Pedigo, and Anthony Mondell

Best Film Editing: Richard Marks

Best Original Score: Michael Gore

Best Sound: James R. Alexander, Rick Kline, Donald O. Mitchell, and Kevin O’Connell

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Release Date: November 23, 1983

Running Time: 132 minutes

Rated PG

Starring: Debra Winger, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and John Lithgow

Directed by: James L. Brooks