Intervention Thoughts

In the fall of 1983, there was this movie about a college friends who have rather lost touch, fifteen years after graduation, gathering again for the funeral of one of their peers (Kevin Costner in the hands and suit shot of the deceased in the casket).  Although I am was a Baby Boomer, then, and thus inevitably, now, I was only seven years out of college and not quite fully into the disenchantment portrayed in the film which starred the now geriatric crew of Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, William Hurt, Mary Kay Place, Tom Berenger and Meg Tillie as the 20 something squeeze of William Hurt's character. I seemed to have missed a lot of the seminal moments of my generation by being just a little younger than those in the thick of it. I mean I was 15 when Woodstock was held, not far from where I was spending my summer stringing beads with my younger cousins, while my somewhat older peers were riding their VW's--long hair flying and beads already made and adorning their counter-cultural selves-toward Yasgur's White Lake New York Far. I think I have said in these pages that while I am intellectually and spiritually sanguine about the fact I really never was a card carrying member of the first wild child group which set the tone for all that has come after, good and bad, emotionally there has always been this little tinge of regret. There I have said it. But withal I am glad I did not face the risk of being a wild child. Many came out unscathed by free love, drugs and rock n' roll. Many did not. I don't think I would have survived it.

Anyway, the crew of mid-30  somethings of this movie, "The Big Chill", spend their time together lamenting selling out their Vietnam Era principles for the capitalistic world.  Kline has a big house (he and his wife have a successful running shoe business), in which they eat, toke and drink, idealizing the idealism of days gone by. One of them, a lawyer, hopes that one of the guys will stop the ticking of her biological clock and Kevin's character is volunteered by his wife for the task. He is not displeased with the assignment. It is a movie about choices made, regrets, and friends both saying what they think to one another, and holding back what they think. There is deep caring, and resentment. They have kicked and screamed their way, metaphorically, and sometimes literally, into mid-adulthood.



This past weekend I found myself way out of the demographic and experiential ball park as I watched "The Intervention" written, directed and acted in by 38 year-old Clea Duvall (second from left in the picture below).



A group of thirty something friends who have rather lost touch gather together for a purported reunion weekend the real goal of which is to tell one couple, who have been unhappily married for ten years, they should get divorced.  Of course, each of them is really in no position to make suggestions for the happiness of others. Ms. Duvall plays the sister of the wife in misery, both psychologically and physically (she has a broken leg, which was written into the script when the lead actress had an accident). Another couple has been planning, and cancelling, their marriage, because one of them has problems committing, along with a substantial alcohol problem. One fellow, played by Ben Schwartz, whose wife has died a year or so before, brings along a nubile young thing, who reminded me suspiciously of the Meg Tillie character in "The Big Chill".  As was Meg in the earlier film interested in both Jeff Goldblum and William Hurt, she is happy to share her affections, in accord with our evolving modern sensibilities, bi-sexually. Let's just say that no one is exactly having the life hoped for. Life was tough in 1983. It is still tough in 2016.

We have come a long way? I don't really think so.  I liked the movie, I will admit. I think Clea Duvall, who was at the Arclight for a question an answer period (that with the narcissistic interruptions of actor Ben Schwartz was less high end movie critique and nuance than occasions for him to ejaculate the F-word, and offer discourse on bathroom functions), is an articulate talent. I wish she had been alone for the discussion. I would have asked her about the influence of "The Big Chill". I have since read that she was aware of it.

But what I came away feeling about the whole experience was kind of what I did- and maybe it was intended that the reader feel- in perusing "Wuthering Heights", the book, not the movie. The story of Cathy and Heathcliff is passionate, energetic, engaging. The second half of the book (the movie had no second part) was the story of their children having much the same sad path, but without the passion, the energy and the engagement. And that's how I felt about "The Intervention".  It felt as if it was a faded copy of "The Big Chill", a derivative, although it had its original threads. And it also occurred to me that the elements that make my boomer generation whiny and rather bad models for the Gen X and Millenial folk (Gen X was born between 1965 and 1984; Millenials are 1984 to date) who primarily populate "The Intervention" are exacerbated in their children, on screen and off.

I wasn't crazy about the generation portrayed in "The Big Chill". I am even less crazy about the ones portrayed in "The Intervention". It terrifies me that this might be who we all really are and what we consider important. I am reminded of that line that Cher says to Danny Aiello in "Moonstruck":

"I just want you to know no matter what you do, you're going to die, just like everybody else."

Shouldn't we be looking to something bigger than ourselves then?