The Big Chill, IMHO, was terrible. It was about an idealistic but bankrupt generation leading to some of the worse excesses: materialism, corruption, drug abuse, etc. But what made me despise the movie was that in spite of the personal flaws these people were still considered "cool." They had their Utopian vision intact from the 60s and though that had quickly passed away in society, they never really left behind the unreal dream that united them, that made them and their counterculture movement a unique moment in American History. The same can be said of Martin Heidegger and his flirtation with Nazism which he never repudiated. He saw something grand and noble within the movement, the spirit of Being rising up within the German people. And he too longed for and revered that moment of German nationalism in the 1930s, in spite of the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by the German people. The point is that Romanticism is still very much alive. Coolness is still "in," especially in weak minded people. The hippie thing is still considered "cool" for the liberal mind set, regardless of age: whether you are 16 or 60. It's about rebellion & liberation and though the Big Chill shows us the tragic failure of a generation to implement their ideals, they still are beautiful losers to a lot of people.
Just so. I liked the movie precisely because it revealed the dirty little secret of the Movement. Maybe that wasn't what the director intended, but it sure as hell was what the movie did.
In particular, I thought it was interesting to see the movie in the light of an earlier film, "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." All that righteous cr*p from the hippie generation about the sins of capitalism and the conformity of men in gray flannel suits. Yet in the end, those were the DECENT businessmen, who cared for family and society. The transformed hippies who went into business cared nothing for family or society. Since business was corrupt, in their view, they would be corrupt with the best of them.
That's why we now have CEOs making a thousand times as much as the peons working for them. Because when a hippie goes sour, he really goes sour. The idea that business can be ethical simply never enters his drug-burned mind.
I started watching the thing and immediately changed channels when the characters began their spastic white people dancing routine.