​TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

Must've been the second or third year of college. I'd chanced upon 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and 'Terms Of Endearment' in quick succession and had promptly fallen in love with Debra Winger. Now, as I sit watching 'Terms Of Endearment' once again, I realise that not all youthful crushes are flippant.
Could be her throaty voice (as if she were seeing off a cold) or could be her unassuming manner (the way she squats in the garden in one of the opening scenes), Ms Winger has you at Hello. But of course, what really really gets you is her elusive strain of joie de vivre. Mind, it's the elusive strain I mention; the strain that is significant and ingrained, not the garden variety which comes plastered in perkiness and flaky optimism. Exhibit 1: Check out the scene where her estranged husband visits her in the hospital. The dying woman lights up merely because he's wearing the tie she'd gifted him just after their marriage. 'God, you're so easy to please,' he(Jeff Daniels) tells her. Your eyes kind of wet up when he adds, somewhat ruefully, 'I wish I'd done it more often.' In fact, so loveable is Winger's character that when you see her having this little fling outside of marriage, all you can do is smile indulgently.
 
And that's what the movie is primarily about. It's a tale of characters with imperfections and of imperfect circumstances; a tale about the great imperfectness that is life itself. And just like life, the tale magically manages those difficult vacillations between the heart-wrenchingly tragic and the uproariously comic & frivolous.
 
Helping the tale unwind are some stellar performances. There's the inimitable Shirley Maclaine(Winger's mother, who ticks off her son-in-law with 'one of the nicest qualities about you has always been that you recognized your weaknesses. Don't lose that quality now, just when you need it the most!') and there's quintessential Jack Nicholson('there's something about your manner,' Maclaine tells him, 'it's like you're trying to toy with me.'). There's also a six year old who should've got the Oscar for best supporting actor that year. It's a treat to watch that four minute performance where he's seeing his dying mother for the last time and his shifty eyes are fraught with apprehension that his elder brother might create a scene.
 
As I said, stellar performances all around.
 
The movie has one flaw though. Somewhere towards the beginning, Shirley Maclaine warns her daughter against marrying Jeff Daniels. "You're not special enough to overcome a bad marriage," she says. Though it's a beautiful line - for it tells of a quality (a quality other than callousness) which supposedly assists people overcome bad marriages - mother couldn't have been more wrong. Because if bad marriages could at all be overcome, it is precisely people like her daughter who'd be able to do so.