Day Nine: St. Elmo's Fire

And it's yet another movie about post-college confusion and drama among a close-knit group of friends. I swear I'm not trying to pick movies that play into my own young-adult insecurities. I've wanted to see St. Elmo's Fire for a while, since I'd often heard it described as like The Breakfast Club five years later, or something like that.

Since I just watched Reality Bites, it was impossible to not compare the two. I liked that one much better, whether it was my appreciation of the snotty Gen-X sarcasm (as opposed to cheesy 80s posturing) or just that I like those characters and the actors that play them better. This movie's characters were just so self-satisfied and one-track. I suppose the same could be said of Reality Bites, but I felt as if those characters were more well-rounded and had realer problems. If nothing else, both movies had the exact same character: the good-looking bad boy (Rob Lowe, Ethan Hawke) who's constantly called "talented" despite being in a terrible bar band and who harbors a secret love for the main character even as he sleeps with every other woman around.

The focus on a large group of friends from college, a mix of guys and girls who date and hook up within the group, reminded me a lot of The Big Chill, one of my favorite movies. That movie focuses on a very similar group about ten years later, when they've all been out of college for quite a while and had time to get married, have kids, sell out, and become disillusioned. In that movie, the Rob Lowe/Ethan Hawke character has killed himself, and it's his funeral that brings them back together to reminisce and let old feelings resurface. One interesting thing about the movie is the character of Chloe, a younger woman who was dating the man who committed suicide. As an outsider, she notes how self-absorbed and nostalgic the friends can be: "I don't like to talk about my past as much as you guys do." St. Elmo's Fire similarly makes it seem as if the friends, with the possible exception of Mare Winningham's character, have nothing to do but obsess and talk about themselves and each other.

Both the St. Elmo's Fire and Big Chill groups of friends remind me more than anything of a certain group of people I got to know last summer because I was dating one of them. They've known each other for years, they're a mix of guys and girls, they've all dated and/or hooked up with one another. They've got a ridiculous number of inside jokes that they'll trot out at any provocation, much like the St. Elmo's Fire group's stupid cheer ("A booga booga booga!"). I used to wonder when I hung out with those guys, and I still do every so often, how they will grow up together--whether they'll stay close, who if anyone will get married, whether they'll someday all get back together for a day or weekend like The Big Chill crowd, and what will be the reason. I certainly have close friends, but not so big and so close a group as theirs. Sometimes I wish I did--the characters in St. Elmo's Fire seem pretty happy with their readymade social circle--but it's also nice to have some freedom.