About halfway through my viewing of Terms of Endearment, I started wondering if the film has any significant plot. It seemed like the vast majority of scenes consist of Aurora (the mother) talking to Emma (her daughter), usually over the telephone–which, of course, were those old landlines that have now become so antiquated and foreign to many people. I marveled a bit at the almost-forgotten quaintness of having to ask to speak to a particular person when calling someone’s household (you know, people used to share phones), and I grew more than a little annoyed at how Aurora and Emma talk to each other and act around others: Aurora often comes across as cold and unfeeling, while Emma seems to be irresponsible and flighty.

Early on in the film, during one of their many conversations, Aurora tells Emma that she doesn’t think Emma should marry Flap, a school teacher whom Emma is supposed to wed the following day. Not surprisingly, Emma is insulted and marries Flap anyway; Aurora skips the wedding, and the two women continue to talk constantly. It’s more than a bit weird. But Emma and Flap’s matrimonial situation deteriorates as the story progresses. While Aurora strikes up an unlikely romance with her philandering neighbor Garrett, Emma becomes convinced that Flap is cheating on her. Her reaction of anger and suspicion is justified, but her decision to begin her own affair with her banker Sam is hypocritical and inexcusable. Then the film takes a drastic turn (spoiler alert), and Emma is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Treatment options back then (late 1970s) aren’t what they are now, and what starts out as an almost comedic look at the lives of two women becomes a cry-fest of good-byes and final wishes.

When the melodrama finally comes to what is supposed to be a satisfactory close, the viewer is left to ponder the meaning of a film whose actors’ performances eclipse its story. So if I can pull some sort of a deeper meaning out of a film with a less-than-dynamic plot, something Aurora says towards the end of the movie really stands out to me. Big spoiler alert here! After Emma’s death, Aurora and Flap actually embrace briefly; and Aurora confesses that she expected to feel “relief” at Emma’s death, presumably because her passing would put an end to her suffering. Yet Aurora doesn’t feel relief at all. Instead, she says that “nothing is harder,” apparently meaning the loss of a child. While the conflicts and romances both women experience with men help to fill out the storyline of this film, the poignant scene of Emma’s death clarifies what the film is really all about: the relationship between a mother and her child. Just as the film opens with Aurora’s deep concern that the sleeping infant Emma has stopped breathing (she hasn’t), the end of the film again places Aurora near her child’s bed. Whereas in Emma’s earliest days, Aurora climbs into the crib to ensure her baby still lives, in Emma’s hospital room Aurora sits in a chair away from the bed while Emma actually does stop breathing. Then when Aurora weeps about her lack of relief, the film’s main point becomes clear: Despite the fact that mothers aren’t perfect, they will never stop loving their children. It’s a good point, but the film definitely takes a circuitous route to make it.

For Me Then…

I was prepared for this film to be sad, so I was confused when it tried to be funny and clever for much of the first half. But when the issue of cancer–specifically breast cancer–arose in the film, I forgot that I had been annoyed with Aurora and Emma’s relationship, and I was honestly a bit revolted by this movie.

Emma languishes in a sterile hospital room with just a few visitors who care about her while her husband cheats on her and her mother remains emotionally aloof (especially from her grandchildren). The biggest decision Emma and her family must make before she dies is who will raise Emma and Flap’s three children because Flap is teaching full-time and chasing other women. My reaction to this is to think how despicable it is that such a life-shattering event as terminal cancer must be mixed with the sexual exploits of a dirtbag husband/father and a mother who hated becoming a grandmother because it made her sound old to her (mostly male) friends.

Sure, Terms of Endearment might make the point that nothing can dissuade a mother from loving her child; but no one, not even Aurora, takes Emma’s flailing hand as she seems to reach for something/someone to hold at the moment of her death. And although Aurora gets custody of Emma’s children and everyone has such a lovely funeral luncheon at the end of the film, I just can’t shake that awful feeling I had when Aurora wept for the relief she was lacking at Emma’s death. For many people the sadness this film evokes arises from the loss of Emma, but for me the real tragedy stems from the lack of purpose and meaning we see in how Terms of Endearment‘s characters approach life–as well as death–combined with an utter ignorance of eternal hope. This, to me, is what makes Emma’s life and death unbearable to watch.