Terms of Endearment (1983)

QFS No. 175 - The invitation for May 14, 2025
For our 175th film, the QFS Selection Committee chose one of the most decorated Oscar-winners in the last quarter of the 20th Century with eleven nominations and five wins, including for Best Picture. Terms of Endearment for a long time has been the most recent Best Picture winner I, your humble curator, have never seen.*

So, for our 175th selection, I sought to remedy that oversight. Director James L. Brooks, is one of the titans of the film and television industry. Not only did he direct a few classic films in addition to Terms of Endearment – including As Good as it Gets (1997) and Broadcast News (1987) – his Gracie Films is a colossus having produced several great films and notable television shows, among them Big (1988), Say Anything… (1989) and, of course, The Simpsons (in its 36th season!). I’ve seen James L. Brooks’ name at the end of more “content” I’ve consumed than probably any other name in the industry.

It's no surprise that Mr. Brooks, who, after having directed multiple actors to Oscar wins, can get a fantastic cast even though he hasn’t directed for nearly 15 years. This December, his Ella McCay (2025), has a true terrific set of actors and although I don’t know anything about the film, I’m looking forward to it coming out.

The same is true with Terms of Endearment – phenomenal cast and I’m very much looking forward to finally watching this Best Picture winner. Join us and discuss Terms of Endearment!

*The next three most recent Best Picture winners I haven’t yet seen are Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Tom Jones (1963) and Gigi (1958) – coming soon to a QFS Selection near you!

*Terms of Endearment* (1983) Directed by James L. Brooks

Reactions and Analyses:
The opening scene of Terms of Endearment (1983) sets the table for the nature of the relationship between the mother Aurora (Shirley MacClaine) and Emma (Debra Winger) for the balance of the film. Their relationship is the entire central story of the movie. A baby sleeps in the crib and a woman, in high heels and well dressed, is concerned that her baby isn’t breathing. The husband, off camera, is trying to allay her fears but Aurora needs to be absolutely sure that the child is alive. The mother won’t be allayed – she pokes the infant until she wakes up and starts wailing. Relieved, she walks away, but the main is in distress and cries.

Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) puts her head on her infant baby girl to make sure she’s still breathing.

Though taken to the extreme, it’s a scene that viewers who are parents would find familiar. The unrelenting fear that your newborn will stop breathing and suddenly die in the crib. But the scene 0also sets up what this relationship will be like – they love each other, they want to make sure the other one is okay, but their love will cause each other distress their whole lives.

And for a subset of the audience, this setup will be enough to set to course of a film that lacks a traditional plot structure. It’s a portrait of a relationship – in this case, primarily a relationship between a mother and a daughter. But that relationship is less between a parent and a child and that of two siblings or closest of friends.

Mother and daughter that behave more like two sisters.

Early in the film, after Emma’s father/Aurora’s husband dies, the two of them are now all they have. Emma is a recent high school graduate but is ready to marry her sweetheart Flap (Jeff Daniels). The night before the wedding Aurora tells Emma that it will be a mistake she regrets for the rest of her life if she marries him. But Emma says she’s going to go through with it and her mother says she’s then she won’t come to the wedding – a threat she makes good on.

Now, half of our QFS discussion group was incredulous – how could these two ever possibly reconcile from this. The half that couldn’t see a way forward is probably also the half that felt Terms of Endearment didn’t hold up as a film in 2025. That it felt of its time, akin to an “Afterschool Special” with its at times over-used music and sentimentality.

The other half felt, as I did, that if you see these two more as friends than as mother and daughter, then perhaps there’s a way forward. Two mercurial people who have already spent a lifetime together and will continue to have one. I’m also in the camp that was totally on board with the sentimentality. (Also, and this only becomes clear by the end of the film, Aurora was right.) And like two best friends, Aurora and Emma make up and Emma even forces her new husband Flap to speak to his new mother-in-law on the phone.

Emma finally speaks with Aurora after the wedding and she makes Flap talk to her too.

Terms of Endearment is a film that is almost impossible to make without an absolutely top notch stellar cast. Without a driving narrative, the only thing that keeps us watching is the cast – we’ve fallen in love with them and curious about their lives. There is no goal, no outcome that we’re seeking. The daughter isn’t attempting to earn her mother’s love – that love is already a given. If anything, Emma is trying to navigate a complicated life with children and a husband who may or may not be having multiple affairs. And her only real confidant is her mother.

Aurora, meanwhile, lives alone after Emma and Flap move to Iowa – leading to one of my favorite lines in a movie full of them, said by Emma: “Some people say Des Moines is the best city in Iowa.” Stuck back in Houston, Aurora is fawned over by a series of men who treat her like a goddess. Though, I’m not exactly sure what the men are getting out of the relationship; she doesn’t seem to pay them much mind. But her life seems pretty thin otherwise but is somehow intrigued by her obnoxious former astronaut neighbor Garrett (Jack Nicholson) whom she has never really met.

Nicholson, of course, eats up this role where he’s able to exert as much of the sleazy mayhem he’s capable of doing. Still, in the grand old tradition of romantic comedies, Garrett and Aurora, two people who have nothing in common start to fall for each other. Aurora sleeps with him, much to Emma’s shocked delight.

Sam (John Lithgow) denies loans to Emma but doesn’t deny his lust for her.

Meanwhile, Emma herself finds someone in Des Moines who actually cares for her – even though he denied their loan application for a second mortgage – Sam (John Lithgow). Both married, Emma and Sam begin an affair that only ends after Flap takes a new job in Nebraska, in what we find out is a move to be closer to a college graduate mistress of his own.

Emma learns that her illness is terminal.

Emma discovers this after being uprooted one more time. But she soon has a bigger problem – she is diagnosed with cancer. As mentioned earlier, if you’re not yet on board with the characters and the film, then the culmination of Emma’s life may not resonate and land as powerfully as it does with someone like me who was on board witnessing the lives of these deeply flawed humans. In her final days, the young mother Emma instructs her eldest son, a pouty Tommy (Troy Bishop), to not mourn her, and gives this speech that for at least one viewer (this guy) was impossible to watch without tears:

Emma talks to her children Tommy (Troy Bishop) and Teddy (Huckleberry Fox) for the final time.

Emma speaks with her children for the last time.

“I know you like me. I know it. For the last year or two, you've been pretending like you hate me. I love you very much. I love you as much as I love anybody, as much as I love myself. And in a few years when I haven't been around to be on your tail about something or irritating you, you could... remember that time that I bought you the baseball glove when you thought we were too broke. You know? Or when I read you those stories? Or when I let you goof off instead of mowing the lawn? Lots of things like that. And you're gonna realize that you love me. And maybe you're gonna feel badly, because you never told me. But don't - I know that you love me. So don't ever do that to yourself, all right?”

Teddy sees his mother for the last time.

If you, as a viewer, do not care deeply for these characters, the above scene and the scenes that surround the death of Emma will fail to resonate. If, however, you are like me and have been curious about theses complicated lives, leading to this final request and permission and forgiveness in one speech to her children who will never again see her alive - then the film succeeds. The QFS discussion group was split on this.

Garrett shows up in Nebraska to comfort and console Aurora.

Regardless, from the point of her diagnosis and up through her death, those scenes are perhaps the apex of the film and it’s when the film really brings all its force together. Perhaps because finally in the film there’s a central purpose at the point - the life and death of Emma. The moment when Aurora hears over the phone that Emma’s tumor is malignant and she hugs their longtime housekeeper Rosie (Betty King) is brief but wrenching and shot handheld. Emma never tells Flap that she had an affair, doesn’t give him an out for all the philandering he had done and misery he caused her over the years – a terrific scene capping off a fraught relationship between two adults who did, ultimately, love each other. Garrett shows up in Nebraska to comfort Aurora, a wonderful character arc for the astronaut-neighbor. And when Emma finally dies – Flap and Aurora have fallen asleep in the hospital room and Aurora, distraught, actually hugs Flap. This is the man she predicted (correctly) would cause her daughter pain, a daughter she was so worried wouldn’t live in the crib – and now she sees her dead in a hospital bed.

Aurora was there for Emma’s first breath and her last.

All of these affairs and twists and turns do not add up to some grand exploration of love, life and romance – at least not something we came up with as a discussion group. There doesn’t appear to be a moral or an insight into relationships and our brief time on this earth. But perhaps the film is supposed to mimic life, in that most lives don’t have a clean narrative, a distinct end game. Life is messy, funny, absurd, tragic and doom filled – and, in the end, we all die.

Rome, Open City (1945)

Quarantine Film Society