In the introduction to the paperback edition of his 1975 novel Terms of Endearment, author Larry McMurtry noted that he wrote the novel after having spent a couple of years rereading several 19th-century novelists, including Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, and George Eliot. As McMurtry put it, “All three, of course, had taken a very searching look at the fibers and textures of life; I doubt I aspired to such profound achievement, but I did hope to search at least a little less superficially among the flea market of details which constitute human existence.”

McMurtry is, in many ways, being modest, as it is the tiny details and nuances of funny, sometimes painful, but always recognizable human behavior that make his novels so readable and memorable. James L. Brooks, who had 20 years experience writing and producing in television, adapted Terms of Endearment in 1983 and, despite it being his feature directorial debut, it swept that year’s Academy Awards. While some aspects of the film version of Terms have not aged all that well, it still plays with sincerity and emotional resonance because Brooks stayed true to McMurtry’s search through “the flea market of details which constitute human existence.”

Terms of Endearment tells the story of the relationship between Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine), whom McMurtry described as “a widow of a certain age, lively, imperious, demanding, unwilling to give up,” and her daughter, Emma (Debra Winger), who is completely unlike her mother, yet inextricably bound to her. Their relationship is not always easy, but it is always deeply real. Aurora, a character who is as fascinating as she is confounding, is painfully honest with her daughter, such as the early scene in which she declares on Emma’s wedding night that she is marrying the wrong man.

Of course, Aurora is right. Emma’s husband, Flap (Jeff Daniels), is an amiable, but utterly uncompelling English professor who ultimately fails Emma at all the wrong moments. In her own ways, Emma fails Flap, as well. McMurtry is no overt moralist, and one of the strengths of his novels is his understanding and acceptance of human flaws and how they play out in various relationships. Brooks stays true to this humanistic view, allowing Aurora, Emma, and the other characters to fall into all of life’s traps, yet always come out, ready to move on to the next stage.

Brooks has been insistent on calling Terms of Endearment a comedy, even though its sense of the dramatic outweighs the laughs it generates. One of the film’s most enduring qualities is Brooks’s ability to blend the comedic and the dramatic, which he developed and honed over two decades working in television, particularly his work writing and producing the groundbreaking The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which he co-created along with a number of spin-off series. We see this perhaps nowhere better than in Aurora’s relationship with Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson), a swaggering, playboy former astronaut who lives next door to her (and who Brooks created entirely for the film). Her relationship with Garrett is so unlikely that it rings true. There is something about the characters and the way MacLaine and Nicholson play them that makes us believe that these opposites would ultimately attract; they fill in each other’s gaps.

The actors deserve a great deal of credit because the honesty of their performances makes the material work. Both Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson won Oscars for their roles, and Debra Winger was nominated for hers. MacLaine etches an unforgettable screen character in Aurora, a woman whose complexities and eccentricities match her (sometimes forced) dignity and willpower. Nicholson's performance is a bit of a showpiece, but he brings a deeper humanity to what could have been a shallow, one-note character. And, even though Winger did not win an Oscar, her performance is the real lynchpin, the part that truly holds the film together. It is too easy to overlook what she does because she plays the plain daughter to MacLaine's showy mother, but she is arguably the most important character because she embodies the kind of innate decency to which all the other characters must aspire.

Staying true to the book’s narrative arc, the final quarter of Terms of Endearment takes a turn for the tragic, which could have been simply maudlin and weepy, but instead deepens the resonance of the various character relationships. Death-bed sequences are most often dramatically excruciating because they are so obvious and easy; when all else fails, drag out the tragic death of a major character. But, somehow Brooks manages to maintain a protracted hospital sequence that gives us all the cliches about a major character dying of cancer without ever feeling false. I don’t think it’s because these final scenes in and of themselves are particularly great, but because the characters have been so well-defined and have grown so close to us over the previous two hours that we are willing to accept this plot development because we want to see how they characters persevere through it.

Copyright © 2023 James Kendrick

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