This is a documentary about the life of Jane Fonda, daughter of film star, Henry Fonda, whom I knew well from his movies of previous eras. I grew up knowing both of them in their professional roles. This is an excellent documentary of Jane, who grew up a shy lonely child enduring her mother's suicide and her father's coldness morphing into a fulfilled woman becoming an activist for humanitarian causes. It spoke to me. Later in life she sees herself not defined by the men she was with or to whom she was married but by her own personal measure and by her own deeds.
We see and listen to this documentary told by Jane as she progresses into the various phases of her life looking at her life through the lens of not only the three different men she wed and but also in her early years through the strained almost sterile relationship she experienced with a father who could act in film but was unemotional and uncommunicative in life. This documentary is the opposite of that.
It is a highly emotive documentary reflecting the pain in her early years because of a father she thought did not love her and the suicide of a broken mentally ill mother whom she never got to know. Through a child's immature eyes one could see why she thought herself deficient in some way even physically unattractive as her father kept chastising her for being overweight. She was in reality thin and later bulimically very thin but still incapable of not only receiving love from either parent but loving herself. Later, finally, on her own in the final scenes she escapes being defined by the men she wed or her sad relationship with her father but defines herself in her own right. She visits her mother's grave for the first time one snowy winter day to apologize for not trying to understand her mother if only to embrace her and tell her she understands her mother's own tormented background and loves her unconditionally.
The documentary takes us on her life's journey through the men she married, the films she starred in and the political life she embraced. Her first marriage to French film director Roger Vadim with whom she had a child, to political left wing activist Tom Hayden with whom she had one child and finally to billionaire and media mogul Ted Turner. Jane was a subsidiary of all of her marriages taking second place to the whims of what she thought the men in her life wanted her to be.
Vadim emphasized her body cajoling her to act in mindless goddess films such as Barbarella. Her leftward political turn and her own growth came as mine did during the Vietnam turbulent years of the Sixties. Though combative I loved that era. It infused her life and my own life with cerebral meaning. Her films were many. I am not able to list them all here but her notable films and ones which impacted my own life and hers were ones filled with social commentary. They were "They Shoot Horses Don't They," a dance marathon film about the torturous Great 1929 Depression and the average people it crushed, "Coming Home," an anti Vietnam war film of the Sixties, "Julia," a profound look at the evils of fascism and Nazi Germany, "China Syndrome," a statement on the dangers of nuclear power and "On Golden Pond," coming full circle acting with her elderly father, Henry Fonda, reflecting the great depth of their own tortured relationship, Henry Fonda's explicit iciness to her and Jane's plea for love from him.
This is a biographical documentary film for our time as the social split occurring in the late sixties between the left and the right has gotten argumentatively worse in this toxic Trumpian era. Trump is a reflection of our broken nation and is a man who capitalizes on that brokenness. I loved this documentary because it takes me back to my own metamorphosis during the late Sixties at a university known for its Berkley-like leftist political slant at that time. I went from a high school girl who questioned nothing to a woman decades later who questions everything as Jane Fonda's later films encourage one to do.
I urge you to see this biography and think about your own human development and what it means to take a political stand even if the ridicule one faces is smothering. I was not a radical at that time but I did love the anti-war radical leftists and black rights advocates including MLK and Malcolm X who had the fortitude to put their lives on the line for humane moral causes and a fierce desire to save their people and humanity from the death that those of privilege and power often deliver!
Now in her 80's Jane Fonda has found a new zest for life as she plays her last act going through it on her own terms.
We see and listen to this documentary told by Jane as she progresses into the various phases of her life looking at her life through the lens of not only the three different men she wed and but also in her early years through the strained almost sterile relationship she experienced with a father who could act in film but was unemotional and uncommunicative in life. This documentary is the opposite of that.
It is a highly emotive documentary reflecting the pain in her early years because of a father she thought did not love her and the suicide of a broken mentally ill mother whom she never got to know. Through a child's immature eyes one could see why she thought herself deficient in some way even physically unattractive as her father kept chastising her for being overweight. She was in reality thin and later bulimically very thin but still incapable of not only receiving love from either parent but loving herself. Later, finally, on her own in the final scenes she escapes being defined by the men she wed or her sad relationship with her father but defines herself in her own right. She visits her mother's grave for the first time one snowy winter day to apologize for not trying to understand her mother if only to embrace her and tell her she understands her mother's own tormented background and loves her unconditionally.
The documentary takes us on her life's journey through the men she married, the films she starred in and the political life she embraced. Her first marriage to French film director Roger Vadim with whom she had a child, to political left wing activist Tom Hayden with whom she had one child and finally to billionaire and media mogul Ted Turner. Jane was a subsidiary of all of her marriages taking second place to the whims of what she thought the men in her life wanted her to be.
Vadim emphasized her body cajoling her to act in mindless goddess films such as Barbarella. Her leftward political turn and her own growth came as mine did during the Vietnam turbulent years of the Sixties. Though combative I loved that era. It infused her life and my own life with cerebral meaning. Her films were many. I am not able to list them all here but her notable films and ones which impacted my own life and hers were ones filled with social commentary. They were "They Shoot Horses Don't They," a dance marathon film about the torturous Great 1929 Depression and the average people it crushed, "Coming Home," an anti Vietnam war film of the Sixties, "Julia," a profound look at the evils of fascism and Nazi Germany, "China Syndrome," a statement on the dangers of nuclear power and "On Golden Pond," coming full circle acting with her elderly father, Henry Fonda, reflecting the great depth of their own tortured relationship, Henry Fonda's explicit iciness to her and Jane's plea for love from him.
This is a biographical documentary film for our time as the social split occurring in the late sixties between the left and the right has gotten argumentatively worse in this toxic Trumpian era. Trump is a reflection of our broken nation and is a man who capitalizes on that brokenness. I loved this documentary because it takes me back to my own metamorphosis during the late Sixties at a university known for its Berkley-like leftist political slant at that time. I went from a high school girl who questioned nothing to a woman decades later who questions everything as Jane Fonda's later films encourage one to do.
I urge you to see this biography and think about your own human development and what it means to take a political stand even if the ridicule one faces is smothering. I was not a radical at that time but I did love the anti-war radical leftists and black rights advocates including MLK and Malcolm X who had the fortitude to put their lives on the line for humane moral causes and a fierce desire to save their people and humanity from the death that those of privilege and power often deliver!
Now in her 80's Jane Fonda has found a new zest for life as she plays her last act going through it on her own terms.