Molly Haskell
“…. [S]o uncertain is first-time Brooks' directorial hand that when the good parts do come, you're more likely to give credit to the subject (cancer: surefire) and the acting than to the director….
“The mother-daughter knot: the most complicated, most ambivalent, and most fascinating relationship of all, and the one least often treated in the movies. How sad that what should have been the heart and soul of the film affects us so little. Debra Winger, the poor man's successor to those unforgettable throaty-voiced smiling-through-their-tears heroines of Margaret Sullavan and Dorothy McGuire, plays another voraciously needy and unfocused character. Her Emma is meant, I think, to suggest the classic dilemma of the homely, scraggly daughter who is (or feels herself to be) a constant disappointment to the socially ambitious mother. But the one thing Shirley MacLaine never suggests, in her wildly careening performance, is refinement…. Aurora comes closer to the archetypally tacky Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas.
“And what alternative does Winger represent? She's vaguely presented as the "good mother," as opposed to MacLaine and--in the film's worst scene--to a gaggle of New York career women. But is she good by choice ore default? Her wants are as mysterious as Aurora's.
“Would Brooks have been more at ease with a father-son relationship? Probably, but I suspect the habits of working in the television series format are more to blame. He is used to operating with a narrow set of givens, social types rather than fully developed characters, in established settings and situations. A great deal of artistry and energy has been expended on makeup, period, dress, and decor, but we never know quite where we are. The characters inhabit a vacuum, enacting a series of confrontations without a social context. Most of the power of the mother-daughter scenes comes from emotions we supply from similar chapters in our own lives….
“The most memorable performance of all is almost wordless: that of Troy Bishop as Winger's oldest child…. Ironically, it is these subordinate performances that capture the resonance of McMurtry's creations, extending beyond the movie frame into past and future, and making Terms of Endearment mandatory viewing.”
Molly Haskell
Vogue, January 1984
“The mother-daughter knot: the most complicated, most ambivalent, and most fascinating relationship of all, and the one least often treated in the movies. How sad that what should have been the heart and soul of the film affects us so little. Debra Winger, the poor man's successor to those unforgettable throaty-voiced smiling-through-their-tears heroines of Margaret Sullavan and Dorothy McGuire, plays another voraciously needy and unfocused character. Her Emma is meant, I think, to suggest the classic dilemma of the homely, scraggly daughter who is (or feels herself to be) a constant disappointment to the socially ambitious mother. But the one thing Shirley MacLaine never suggests, in her wildly careening performance, is refinement…. Aurora comes closer to the archetypally tacky Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas.
“And what alternative does Winger represent? She's vaguely presented as the "good mother," as opposed to MacLaine and--in the film's worst scene--to a gaggle of New York career women. But is she good by choice ore default? Her wants are as mysterious as Aurora's.
“Would Brooks have been more at ease with a father-son relationship? Probably, but I suspect the habits of working in the television series format are more to blame. He is used to operating with a narrow set of givens, social types rather than fully developed characters, in established settings and situations. A great deal of artistry and energy has been expended on makeup, period, dress, and decor, but we never know quite where we are. The characters inhabit a vacuum, enacting a series of confrontations without a social context. Most of the power of the mother-daughter scenes comes from emotions we supply from similar chapters in our own lives….
“The most memorable performance of all is almost wordless: that of Troy Bishop as Winger's oldest child…. Ironically, it is these subordinate performances that capture the resonance of McMurtry's creations, extending beyond the movie frame into past and future, and making Terms of Endearment mandatory viewing.”
Molly Haskell
Vogue, January 1984
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