Plenty
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DVD details
Actor: Charles Dance, John Gielgud, Meryl Streep, Sting, Tracey UllmanDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 129 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-04-16
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Product features:
- Widescreen presentation
DVD Reviews of Plenty
DVD Review: Underrated film from underrated director Schepisi
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, it was fairly well-reviewed when it came out, but it's more than merely a "good" film. I thought it was good the first time I saw it. By the third time I watched it I thought it was great and by the fifth viewing I was awestruck. Plenty is rich, subtle, low key and--for many (not me)--hard to warm up to, because none of the characters is especially lovable, at least not for very long. This isn't a film where you "root" for anyone. It's more of a film where you watch, observe, live and breathe in the times, amazed that, even though you've never lived in this period, after this movie you feel as though you have.
In the excellent director's interview that comes with this version of the DVD (but not the other, less expensive one, so be sure to fork out the extra bucks and get this issue) Fred Schepisi explains that this is a film about memory. What he modestly doesn't say is he conveys the theme of memory superbly well through his expert direction, with music and lighting and set cues that make us feel as though we are living life with Susan, and that, oddly, we have lived it along with her before. We feel her nostalgia for France when she does. We feel her claustrophobia in her suburban London existence. Plenty is a film of rich textures, one we can almost smell and taste as we watch it.
Its themes are rich and multi-faceted. Plenty is about idealism and disillusionment, about hypocracy and naivete, about promises never fulfilled, or that may be unfulfillable. The heroic "good" war, the post-war rise of diplomacy to replace confrontation, the hypocracy of suburban middle-class morality, the belief that the good guys can do anything, so long as they do it in a civil manner, these are just some of the themes of Plenty. And watching it, I was somehow reminded strongly of our present times in many ways. We (Americans) are in a rampant consumer culture, drenched in middle-class morality as we rationalize everything from war with Iraq to plundering oil for our SUVs. We feel we can get away with questionable actions of foreign policy if we go about it diplomatically, because we're "the good guys." (John Gielgud's speech to Charles Dance as he explains his disenchantment over Suez, where he says he would have gone along with whatever the government cooked up so long as they would have been honest to him about it, keeps ringing in my ears.) Most of us don't stop to examine our lives, and the fact that at one point Susan goes into advertising ("I don't expect it to stretch me, but maybe it'll be good fun.") made me howl. The film also deals with class distinctions and rising through the social classes beautifully. Susan goes from working girl to upwardly mobile woman to diplomat's wealthy wife. Her best pal Alice does all this as well, basically following on Susan's coattails in the beginning, but although she starts out rather immature she eventually grows beyond Susan, though she probably would not realize that herself. It's odd that in a novel, movie or play the secondary character grows beyond the hero(ine), but that is just one twist that makes this work fascinating.
It all happens rather subtly. There is no pontificating, no "morals," no dissolves and title cards that say things like "Eight years later." No one explains the changes that happen to these characters slowly, over two decades, and they do not seem to notice many of them themselves. Schepisi counts on the viewer to figure it all out. Maybe that's one reason the film has never done well, whether in the theaters, on the critics' lists, or on home video. Another is it's not a very "American" movie. Aside from the fact that it deals with Europe and its culture and history, of which most Americans are woefully ignorant, it does not have a single hero or heroine, a single point of view, and a feel-good ending, three essential ingredients for almost any American movie (at least of the last 25 years). As I often find myself saying when it comes to movies I truly love, I'm amazed this got made at all.
Streep plays the role of Susan very well (of course), but with perhaps just a bit more restaint and calculation than I would have liked. We never really see a slow build, an evolution, of her Susan, but instead flashes of sanity as she battles to live in a too-sedate and plastic world. More impressive are the other characters. Charles Dance is sympathetic (the only somewhat sympathetic character in the movie) as Susan's long-suffering husband Raymond, someone in love with her and yet destinted to never understand her. Tracey Ullman impressively holds her own in every scene with Streep as best friend Alice. And the eclectic casting of the supporting characters--John Gielgud, Ian McKellen, Sam Neill, Sting (!) and Burt Kwok (Kato in the Inspector Clouseau movies, who here has what may be the best line, "These 'Gyps need whipping!")--works brilliantly. Schepisi deserves credit for not turning this into a "mere" Masterpiece Theater costume drama, which could have easily happened if he'd just plundered the cast of BBC dramas for his actors.
Fred Schepisi is one of our more underrated directors. (I say "ours," even though he's from Australia.) And this may be his greatest film. I urge anyone who's curious, though, to watch it several times before making a judgment. As one of the reviewers below said, the film's greatness doesn't hit you the first time. If you give it time, though, it will eventually sweep you away. I just wish some of those critics would give it a few more spins in their DVD players, so that they'd *really* be impressed. (I guess for the record I should mention picture quality, sound, etc., all sharp, crisp, clear, blah blah blah. Widescreen 16x9 format, enhanced for supersized TVs, and all that.)
Description of Plenty
David Hare's Broadway play--about political idealism and the way some people always need to be fighting for a cause--was credibly transferred to the screen by director Fred Schepisi from Hare's screenplay. Meryl Streep (in the midst of a streak of movies that required accents) plays a British woman who fought for the French Resistance during World War II. When she returns to normal life in post-war England and marries a diplomat, she becomes something of a terror--speaking her mind when, of course, diplomacy dictates otherwise. Did she leave the best part of herself in France, where life was more meaningful and immediate? Hare's comment on Great Britain's post-war slide into Thatcherism, this film features a tough-minded (and not particularly likable) performance by Streep, who is actually quite good. It's a hard movie to embrace, but a well-made one nonetheless. --Marshall FineBestsellers in DVD
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