Hub Pages
A Christian Perspective of “Beaches”
By Peter Veugelaers
Updated April 19, 2025
Background
Beaches, from Touchstone and Warner Brothers, is a sentimental drama about two friends through a lifetime–starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as the friends. This slightly over two-hour film was released in 1988 and is directed by Garry Marshall, brother of Penny Marshall who directed the same year’s Big.
Beaches is a film from the United States and set in that country and is regarded as a sentimental classic, a woman’s picture, and one that couples can watch. The theme song of the film, Wind Beneath My Wings sung by unconventional songstress and performer Bette Midler in one of her more meaningful moments is a well-regarded classic and instantly recognizable.
Story
The key characters are CC Bloom and Hilary who met as children at a beach one holiday and became friends ever since. It is a friendship between a poor boisterous girl (CC) and a sensible girl from a rich family (Hilary). They often exchanged letters when they were apart.
Later in life, CC (played by Bette Midler) is advancing in her acting and singing career and John (John Heard), her husband, feels left behind and divorces her. Hilary (Barbara Hershey) marries lawyer Michael Essex (James Read) but when Hilary spies on her man having an intimate moment with another woman in their house that is the end of their marriage.
CC and Hilary wanted more from marriage and life, but CC and Hilary have the kind of friendship that one admires from personal experience or from a distance. They stick together as close friends through all sorts of situations and moments that life offers them, and this is the heart of the film, this remarkably close friendship.
Review
CC and Hilary were an unbelievable couple as children – as a poor and rich girl – and that might not have come off convincingly. Fluffy pen pal correspondence in their teens and Hilary surprisingly dropping into CC’s life seems unconvincing.
Divorces afoot, and occasionally, a seriously foul word went past, but I cannot remember for sure. Bette Midler has played the comical loudmouth and the girl you don’t mess with, in Outrageous Fortune and Ruthless People, but in Beaches, she shows her more sensitive side with feeling and warmth. Barbara Hershey is mellow in this, her quiet sensitivity is appealing, however there is not the emotional range she brought to her Oscar nominated role in Hannah and Her Sisters.
The males in the movie are support for the two female leads and they carry their roles well, etching out defined characteristics of the male who escape responsibility, which kind of puts males in a bad light, but there is a sense that it rings true in some situations if not many, and since this is a ‘female’s’ picture, it might hold more weight on that audience.
Garry’s Marshall’s direction could have done with more of a polish in many ways, but the heart here is certainly in the right place. The film has its share of heartbreaks and bittersweet moments that do get under your skin.
Beaches brings an emotional pay-off for the viewer. Midler and Hershey in the key roles do their stuff well. Midler and Hershey are so malleable and weave their way into your system.
Christian Perspective
Bad things happen to women from the men in their lives. In this film, it shows how as friends they endure the messy situations with the men in their lives, but which is presented palatably.
Beaches shows people being ‘unlucky in love’ – not an apt choice to watch on a Rose Day – nevertheless, Beaches is the alternative for the usual Valentine week offerings if your relationships have been less than satisfactory—there are still the pleasures of good friendships. Beaches is alternative viewing for those disillusioned by the sweetless aroma of thorny roses as well as saying something interesting about—beaches. Although this bitter-sweet story is not the perfect catharsis for Rose Day blues, it is still a tribute to great friendships, one which begins and continues at the beach.
This is not friendship that comes and goes. This is enduring friendship, between CC and Hilary, two people who are opposites in many ways, but have this special connection. Their friendship transcends political and social barriers which is the mark of a superior film as the two friends reach into one another’s lives without the barriers of political or social baggage. They must have held something deeply in common (though the film does not focus on what jelled them together).
There is a sense that there is a grace of friendship or some grace, be that God’s grace directly, that can transcend life and offer comfort, hope, and consolation.
I recall a woman who covered the film’s song Wind Beneath My Wings at an inter-church worship meeting–she changed the subject of the song to Jesus, the wind beneath her wings.
Cast:
Cast: Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey, John Heard, Spalding Gray, Lainie Kazan, James Read, Grace Johnston, Mayim Bialik, Marcie Leeds, Michael French, Frank Campanella, Nicky Blair, Lori Marshall. Screenplay: Mary Agnes Donoghue, based on the novel by Iris Rainer Dart. Director: Garry Marshall. Film released December 21, 1988.
