7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Aurora and Emma are mother and daughter who march to different drummers. The movie covers several years of their lives as each finds different reasons to go on living and find joy.
Starring: Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, Danny DeVitoRomance | 100% |
Drama | 31% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (Original) (224 kbps)
French: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono (224 kbps)
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
The response to any film varies according to what one brings to the experience, but few films depend on the viewer's emotional baggage as much as James Brooks's Terms of Endearment, winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Screen Adaptation and Best Picture of 1983. Brooks has always insisted that he intended to make a comedy, but in streamlining Texas author Larry McMurtry's novel for the screen, Brooks jettisoned or reduced much of the most obvious comic material centered on Texas widow Aurora Greenaway. Instead, he focused on the emotionally thorny parent/child relationship between Aurora and her daughter, Emma, and on Emma's relationships with her own children (and husband). These were complex, multi-layered relationships fraught with tension and contradiction, and Brooks repeatedly, even deliberately, violated the basic rule that comedy equals tragedy plus time. In Terms of Endearment, time is always running out. Brooks rarely allows the kind of "minimum safe distance" that makes laughter easy and fun when emotional situations turn radioactive. Many of the sharpest jokes in Terms of Endearment (if you can call them that) occur up close and in your face, when feelings are raw and exposed, and serious things are happening all around. Brooks's emotional brinksmanship isn't for everyone. It certainly didn't work for me, when I first saw Terms of Endearment as a newlywed in 1984. Preoccupied by the anxieties of learning how to be married, I related most immediately to the struggles of Emma and her husband to define the terms of their marriage, an enterprise in which they are ultimately unsuccessful. Now, with the film and my own marriage at our thirtieth anniversary, watching it is an entirely different experience. I'm better able to focus on the film's exploration of how different generations reach out to each other, sometimes connecting, sometimes missing. It's Emma who ultimately sees this dynamic most clearly at the film's conclusion, and she's the one who teaches her mother a few things she didn't even know she needed to learn.
The talented Polish cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak shot Terms of Endearment during the period in his career when he was working primarily on dramas such as The Verdict with Sidney Lumet. (Eleven years later, he would shoot Speed and be transformed overnight into a photographer, and then a director, of action films.) A good DP delivers whatever the director wants, and Brooks, who was coming from television, appears to have wanted a well-lit, clearly visible frame without excessive stylization: a functional image with the richer appearance of a motion picture. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, from a Paramount transfer, offers a superb rendition of Bartkowiak's photography. Except for a few opening scenes, which have been deliberately softened because they are set in the past, the image is clear, detailed and sharply defined, with a natural grain pattern that has been so finely rendered that it will barely be noticed. The color palette in and around Aurora's Texas home is bright, warm and saturated, while the look of Emma's surrounding once she relocates to the Midwest tend to be somewhat cooler and duller. But almost every scene in Terms of Endearment is clearly lit, even at night. The major exception is the initial love scene between Aurora and Garrett, where the shadows are an essential part of the comedy. Warner has opted for a compression ratio at the high end of their usual range, with an average bitrate of 26.34 Mbps. As has become their usual practice, they have left significant space on the BD-50 unused, but there was nothing in the image to indicate overcompression. Terms of Endearment has been given a gorgeous presentation on Blu-ray.
Terms of Endearment was released in mono, which is available in a two-channel version as Dolby Digital 2.0 (listed as "restored mono") with identical left and right front channels. The default audio track is lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, which contains a very conservative remix of the mono track that retains the front-oriented nature of the mix, but uses the channel separations to give a little more authority and somewhat deeper bass extension to the score by Michael Gore (Fame). The score is essential to the film's tone, buoying moments that might otherwise become too serious. Several classic show tunes occur as source music, and they blend smoothly into the mix. The dialogue is always clear, and a few big moments (notably a drive on the beach in Breedlove's car) have strong enough sound effects to register appropriately.
The extras have been ported over from Paramount's 2001 DVD, which has been reissued several times in different packaging.
Terms of Endearment caught a lot of people by surprise when it was released, and it still has that power, because nothing about its characters or their relationships is simple or straightforward. Even Jeff Daniels' Flap Wilson, who is often relegated to the sidelines and makes decisions that appear, at first blush, to be less than admirable, is a multi-faceted character who struggles with difficult life decisions. (It's a tribute to Daniels that he makes Flap a genuine presence, with a sense that there's a real person with feelings behind the excuses, where another actor might have let him simply be the bad guy.) The film rewards multiple viewings, because so much happens between the lines (and apart from the jokes) that there's more to notice each time. The characters are all deeply flawed, but in a way that's genuine, often very funny and ultimately moving. Highly recommended.
2012
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