I don't understand-Why did this win Best Pic of 1983?
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MuchToBeGratefulFor — 12 years ago(March 01, 2014 06:32 AM)
I just googled rankings of the Best Picture winners, and this particular list has ToE ranked #18 out of the 85 winners. So it's considered a deserving winner, and one of the better winners. Here is why this writer thought so:
This old-fashioned weepy, one of the few womens films thats ever won Best Picture, has turned out to be timeless because the screenplay, which James L. Brooks adapted from Larry McMurtrys novel, is sharp as hell. Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger, who pretty much hated each other throughout filming (and after), made their competition work for the movie. MacLaine gets the showier role in Aurora, so she won the Oscar, but its Winger as funny introvert Emma who will break your heart. Even so, Jack Nicholson somehow manages to steal every scene, and theres never been a movie jerk before or since like Jeff Daniels Flap. Also, Terms of Endearment has the saddest scene ever in a movie [when Emma says goodbye to her sons], and I just watched it and am now crying at my desk.
You must be the change you seek in the world. Gandhi -
Golem36 — 11 years ago(April 04, 2014 03:40 PM)
What film should have won in 1983? I thought "Fanny and Alexander" was the best film of that year (it won best foreign film). "Terms of Endearment" was the best American film that year so I agreed with it winning best picture.
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rick3262 — 10 years ago(April 18, 2015 07:55 AM)
These movies touch upon social issues:
"Kramer vs Kramer (1980) explored divorce and the father, Dustin Hoffman, having to play the mother role at a time when father-mother roles were clearly separated.
"Ordinary People" (1981) explored realistic dynamics and tensions between family members in which Mary Tyler Moore, the mother, played the heavy.
"Terms of Endearment" (1984) explored the often complex mother-daughter relationships.
All of these movies broke new ground. -
bliss66 — 11 years ago(July 14, 2014 06:43 PM)
As someone mentioned up thread, looking back it may not seem that accomplished but in 1983 it marked the emergence of Debra Winger as a major actress (after high profile roles in Urban Cowboy and Officer and A Gentleman), it was the first time Jack Nicholson played this kind of middle-aged character (which would become the template, more or less, for the rest of his career), it was the first feature by James L. Brooks after success on television with Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi, and it was a re-emergence of Shirley MacLaine - whose popularity went back decades with generations of filmgoers - as a big screen powerhouse of an actress. It also dared to be ordinary and there were plenty of more urbane people at the time who were left scratching their heads at its popularity.
Part of it is Brooks' screenplay and direction which delivers satisfying scenes and snapshots from the very beginning, carefully subverting our expectation of sentiment, somehow saving the big emotional payoffs for the end while still managing to surprise - with MacLaine's manic outburst at the hospital, perfectly rooted within her character, and the sudden silence of Emma's death followed by MacLaine's immediate and sudden regret. And, of course, it's the performances as well: aside from the headliners, we'd never seen Jeff Daniels on screen before and Terms was the moment when John Lithgow worked his way into people's hearts, nabbing an Oscar nomination to boot.
And the score, at once familiar and uniquely fitting to this story. It added to the sense of how these two women faced the challenges in their lives. All of it made for a satisfying comic drama in which we watch nothing more than a complete cycle of life in which its lack of pretension is part of its charm. -
Con-Deuce — 9 years ago(May 08, 2016 09:32 AM)
I recall that 1983 was not a great year of films. "The Right Stuff" came out but for some reason, it didn't take off at the box office. I think it was because in 1983, there wasn't a lot of interest in astronauts or the space program. If it had been made 10 years later, I think it would have been a big hit.
Late in 1983, there was no clear front runner for Best Picture until "Terms of Endearment" exploded right around Thanksgiving. Think what you will of it now, at the time of its release, "Terms of Endearment" was huge. It's hard today to fathom today where films come and go so quickly but "Terms of Endearment" was (like a lot films back then) more than a bit of a phenomenom and stayed in theaters for months. It was really big. And it is a good movie. It's strongest element is the acting especially by Winger. The weakest element is the direction which is kind of all over the place (a style that would show it's weakness in Brooks successive films). The movie's "feel" was unique at the time and I myself admire it's restraint. It's a very manipulative movie but somehow restrains from going over the top. The god awful film version of "Steel Magnolias" was clearly made to outdo "Terms of Endearment" and is a case study in the kind of hit-them-over-the-head method of film making (the same director of "Steel Magnolias" also directed the sequel to "Terms of Endearment").