Early in the film Grand Canyon, directed by Lawrence Kasdan, there are a few wordless seconds that convey a sense of transcendence in a manner that wouldn’t feel out of place in one of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s works: the character of Simon, after having been on a long distance phone call with his daughter, and while in the middle of the simple chore of putting away his groceries, appears to allow his mind to drift — and in a ponderous, slightly fascinated manner, as if on the verge of some new awareness, slowly raises his hand to his face to touch his cheek. 

Even by that point in the film, the depiction of Simon has already been marked by a certain dissonance: while some aspects situate him as perfectly ordinary, with everyday cares, joys, and needs, he is also shown to be generous, helpful, self-possessed and even wise beyond the normal measure. At that moment when he touches his cheek, those two strands seem to be harmonized, as his gesture communicates a simultaneous acknowledgment of the wonder and of the banality of existing. The way it is performed, the action actually suggests two entities in one body: the one who touches and the one who is touched — the spiritual and the physical, as it were — and the instant may be understood as one of mutual recognition between them.

“Everything seems so close together.”

Grand Canyon, written by Lawrence and Meg Kasdan, is ostensibly a narrative work constructed around an ensemble of interconnected characters and their worldly worries, as well as a portrait of the city of Los Angeles at a particular time, but the film is also permeated by a concern with the relation between matter and spirit, and with the ways in which such relation may be perceived. That preoccupation not only finds direct expression in the story, it also guides filmmaking decisions, with aspects of style and form working to achieve a fuller representation of reality by allusion to the intangible, ineffable components of a person’s experience of it. Additionally, there is an interplay between those two elements — the story, and the way the story is told — that reinforces the significance of the narrative and enlarges ideas, at times discussed by the characters themselves, which pertain to that metaphysical interest.

The film’s opening title sequence juxtaposes two identical situations, two basketball games, associating one primarily with grace, connection, and peacefulness, and the other more immediately with noise, excitement and distraction. This serves as a first indication of the distinctions between two characters whose meeting is a main plot point: Simon is a part of that first, more harmonious world, and he is one of the players in the game; Mack is shown in the agitated environment of the second game, and is a mere member of the audience watching it. He is in the middle of an overload of stimuli, his attention diverted by women walking by the aisles, and all the while almost aloof. Simon is connected to the present moment, Mack is disconnected from himself. These realities will be established in different ways over the course of the film, with Mack voicing his perplexity in regard to his own actions (“I do this shit, and the next morning I’m astounded!”) and being drawn to Simon after he meets him because he recognizes in his new acquaintance something that he finds lacking in himself. The two game scenes are brought together by a simple, precise match cut, which, in turn, functions remarkably as a cinematic expression of a sentence spoken later by the character of Claire: “Everything seems so close together”, she says, referring to her impression that each situation and each person, even herself, appears to accommodate polar opposites.

A variation of the contrast displayed in that sequence can be observed on a larger scale, across the whole film. While the amount of life packed in the story is stunning, including all sorts of budding relationships (between two friends, between a woman and her eventual foster-child, between two teenage sweethearts, between two people on their first date, initiating a romance) and significant events (an earthquake, a shooting, disturbing dreams, and more), the general mood of the film is serene, with several scenes transmitting a quiet atmosphere, and the editing throughout creating a sensation of a natural, peaceful flow. It is as if the opposition that Simon mentions in his first conversation with Mack, between the slowness of the forming of the rocks in the canyons and the busy pace of human life, is being investigated also at the level of the film’s shape, and is finally resolved in the suggestion that what is typically construed as two separate elements may be viewed differently: that an essential calmness remains underlying all restless activity.

“Man, get yourself to the Grand Canyon.”

With its ensemble cast and its exploration of the subject of friendship, Grand Canyon, released in 1991, may be superficially correlated to The Big Chill, Kasdan’s film from 1983. But the two works are surprisingly unalike in their deeper themes and artistic styles. The earlier film, written by Kasdan and Barbara Benedek, doesn’t delve at all into spiritual or metaphysical issues, in spite of the central factor of Alex’s death; and the directorial approach is marked by what could be called a traditional naturalism, with virtually no deployment of the tools specific to filmmaking to reveal extra dimensions of the characters’ experiences. Those two aspects  — one of content, the other of form, both absent earlier and evident later — of the manifestation of a subtler point of view seem to be, for the director, fused together, and may have sprung at the same time, from the same source.

In 1988, after The Big Chill and before Grand Canyon, Kasdan made The Accidental Tourist, based on Anne Tyler’s eponymous novel. The adaptation, written by Kasdan and Frank Galati, is extremely close to the book, and the film is faithful to the original, not only by retaining details of the plot and specificities of character and places, but by managing to convey the same sense of the protagonist’s inner life that is conjured by Tyler’s prose. Macon, who has lost his child and separated from his wife, is, from the beginning of the story, almost like a ghost, taken over by a feeling of being shut-off, dissociated from the rest of the world. He is as if not truly alive, merely functioning, going through the motions. In the novel, the impression that is formed is that Macon is in limbo. This space is not portrayed as either good or bad, it is a place of transition in which he is, by turns, either comfortable or trapped. Viewed through the prism of Macon’s consciousness, in a way that could not be fully articulated by himself but is grasped by the reader, his experience of life seems one part reverie and one part gloom, a crucial balance that runs across the book and that the film captures and is able to relay. 

The Accidental Tourist prefigures Grand Canyon in details of cinematography and editing — scenes that involve subjectivity, such as poignant flashbacks or other moments in which the passage of time is either compressed or extended, have a “floaty” quality achieved with the camerawork, an incorporation of dissolves, a distinctive use of slow motion, and a judiciously layered aural environment — as well as in particulars of the narrative: there is a similar stream of uninterrupted incidents and new events; there is a focus on a character who allows himself to be woken from his slumber; there is a scintillating webbing of connections between people; and explicit, forthright reference to those connections in their conversations.

In one scene, the character of Julian makes a peculiar remark, denoting a child-like availability to be astonished by life: “Isn’t it amazing how two separate lives can link up together? I mean, two differentnesses.” Connecting an everyday phenomenon to a sense of wonder, the observation is suggestive of a resigned puzzlement before invisible forces. It resonates at that moment in the film because the same idea has already been put forth by the developments of the story, and the mystery it implies has been hinted at by the allusive property of the filmmaking. It is possible to find in that line of dialogue — taken verbatim from Anne Tyler’s novel — a juncture point, a gate between Lawrence Kasdan’s concerns in 1983 and in 1991: while it expresses almost the opposite to a statement made by the character of Nick in The Big Chill, when he cynically says to his friends that it is no great surprise that they were close in college, it feels like a direct foreshadowing of Grand Canyon, could be equally uttered in conversation by more than one of its characters, could even be imagined as a mantra guiding the making of that film.

“What if these are miracles, Mack?”

That brief moment in Grand Canyon when Simon touches his own cheek is the distillation of what the whole film is communicating. Simon’s automatic, intuitive discernment that the body is animated by spirit signals a particular sensitivity, manifested in his keener appreciation of people and circumstances, of the cosmic nature of existence. It wouldn’t be a great stretch to interpret certain elements of the plot as overtly mystical or even to accept Simon as a kind of angel — a recurrent symbolism in stories that take place in Los Angeles. In fact, in a pivotal scene, Mack himself says to Simon that he wanted to see him again because he was afraid he would otherwise start to think Simon was not a real person, as that had happened once before with a woman who saved his life and whom he never saw again, leading him to wonder if she was an actual human being: “was that a real person, or was that something else, you know, sent from somewhere else to grab me back from that curb?” But scenes showing Simon alone, or with his sister and nephew, or on a date, create the necessary counterpoint to that mystical angle, establishing the spin that is the fundamental theme of the film: life can be lived in acknowledgment or in disregard of the ineffable mystery, or mysteries, which are integral to everything, are omnipresent. And possibly one’s experience of the world is richer when it includes an awareness of something that defies understanding. The film’s characters are at different stages of this relationship, including one, Davis, who is shocked into that place of acknowledgment, only to abandon it and dismiss his short-lived transformation as a moment of folly. Unlike him, Claire has a more sustained realization, held by a slow accruement of incidents in which she finds relevance. In conversation with her husband, she says: “What if these are miracles, Mack? Maybe we don’t have any experience with miracles so we’re slow to recognize them.” Simon, by his turn, while not ethereal, as human as Davis or Claire, is the unassuming guide and seer of the film, a being who seems to see himself in others, and vice-versa, who is able to bring them to a greater connection with life and facilitate their interactions. He gives the impression, from his very first appearance, of clearing the air, when things are heavy and constricted. And by the end he is standing with a group of close relations on the edge of the vast open landscape of the Grand Canyon.

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