Film: The Decade-Defining Movie "The Breakfast Club" Turns 40

Released on 15 February 1985, "The Breakfast Club" one of the best decade film and one of the most defining genres of the decade was the teenage coming of age story. The mastermind behind was John Hughes again, a one of a kind prevalent writers and directors of the decade who knew how to utilize this angst in his work, and subsequently, that work spoke to teenage audiences in the '80s and for decades to come. 

 

Hughes credits includes the iconic "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Pretty In Pink" and "Some Kind Of Wonderful" amongst other, but definitely "The Breakfast Club" is his most memorable one, the story of five mismatched students all trapped in the worst place a teen could find themselves: Saturday detention. The Breakfast Club earned its rightful spot in pop culture and film history forty years ago thanks to its relatable characters and unique single location that was utilized to its fullest potential. 

The plot followed five teenagers all from different high school cliques-jocks, nerds, punks, artists, and popular girls-who spent a Saturday detention realizing they weren’t so different after all and bonding over their shared struggles with their school and home lives. What started as awkward, stilted conversations between the five different students eventually turned into them pouring their hearts out to one another and opening up about their various struggles and all the pain that came with being a teenager. Thanks to their differing social standings and personalities, every individual viewer could all find at least one character in the group who they related to or connected with on a personal level.

One of the film’s most well-known and defining scenes came at the climax of The Breakfast Club, where the five students sit in a circle and all explain what they did to end up in detention. Every audience member could relate to at least one of the struggles the characters were facing. Parents who put too much pressure on their kids, academically or athletically, divorce, apathy, or even abuse were issues that faced teens in the previous decades and sadly continue to do so even today. The struggles the characters faced in their daily lives, at home and at school, weren’t exclusive to the 1980s, which helped keep the film’s timeless quality to it. Films that spoke to viewers across generations were ones that often stayed in the pop culture lexicon.

The movie ended when detention did. The characters and the audience alike didn’t know what the group would look like come Monday morning. Would they stay friends and acknowledge each other in the crowded high school hallways? Or would they carry on as if that transformative Saturday never happened at all? These questions never got answered, and it left enough space for audience interpretation and discussion, which helped propel it even more into general conversation. Ambiguous endings could often be divisive with audiences, but in the case of The Breakfast Club, it actually worked in the film's favor. While viewers would never know what happened on Monday morning, they did see how that Saturday detention forever changed the five characters, and as Simple Mind's 'Don't You Forget About Me' played over the end credits, they were left with a feeling of hope.

A curious aspect of The Breakfast Club was its use of a single location for the film’s setting and how it elevated the tight script. The entirety of the movie takes place at a high school over the course of one day, with the vast majority of the runtime being set in the library where the characters serve their detention time. The crew really got the most out of the library setting that they possibly could. With the sheer size of it, characters were allowed to move about and keep the same space from feeling stale and repetitive. From the desks to the second floor overlooking the rest of the space to the air ducts above the characters’ heads, every inch of the library was shown at one point in the film’s runtime. 

With the dialogue being the primary way the audience learned about each character's personality, backstory, and dynamics with one another, the focus had to be on the actors and their line deliveries, and the setting had to allow them space for that. Thanks to the all-star cast of Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy, the characters didn't feel like their assigned school clique; they felt like real people, and the script and their interpretation of it helped bring their respective characters to life.

Unfortunately like with most films from years gone by, some jokes and lines aged better than others, and a high school movie from the 1980s certainly didn't stand completely by modern standards. Nevertheless, The Breakfast Club still possessed a timeless script and universal setting that helped it stay in the pop culture lexicon 25 years after it first came out in theaters.  

The film withstood the test of time thanks to a relatable cast of characters and its creative utilization of a memorable single location, and of course a thrilling and fantastic single by Simple Minds, that still sounds fresh as it was in 1985 when MTV was king.