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Jane Fonda in Five Acts
The one of a kind life and career of the legendary Jane Fonda is documented in Jane Fonda in Five Acts, a slightly pretentious and definitely overlong documentary that spends more time focusing on her activism than her acting career and in what seems to be pandering to the star herself, seems to go on forever.
Director Susan Lacy obviously had the star at her ear for every minute of this process of producing this HBO documentary because there is not a moment onscreen here that didn't seem to be pre-approved by the star before making it to the final cut because the actress comes out looking like Superwoman here and I don't think that's an accident. Ironically, the first four acts of the five acts in the life of this alleged super woman were named after her father and her three husbands. We're talking about a woman who has been the ultimate symbol of female empowerment for decades and the director titles sections of her life after the men in her life?
The film does a nice job of profiling the extremely complicated relationship she had with both of her parents. I have to admit I found this part of the documentary very interesting because I have never heard or read anything about Fonda's mother before. I had always seen Henry Fonda photographed with his last wife Shirlee, but had no exposure to his previous marriages. Jane lets us know that she felt emotionally abused and unloved by both of her parents. It's revealed that her mother was what is now known as bipolar and eventually took her own life. It's also revealed that Henry was not exactly the husband or father of the year either...there's a heartbreaking moment in the film where Fonda is looking at a photograph of her entire family and recalls that her father was cheating on her mother at the time and that the family was terribly unhappy when the photograph was taken...one of the documentary's truly moving moments. It's made clear here that everything we saw onscreen between Jane and Henry in On Golden Pond was quite real...she even talks about an unscripted moment she initiated that brought tears to both sets of eyes.
Sadly, the majority of this documentary is the star droning on and on about how unhappy she was and how no one, including her father and three husbands, ever really understood her. The documentary does focus a little too strongly on her "Hanoi Jane" period and how she regrets a lot of what she was doing then, though she doesn't regret the activist spirit that was imbued inside her by her time as Hanoi Jane, but personally, this is water on the bridge or water that no one cares about anymore, and I would have liked this documentary to have concentrated a little more on her than her incredible film career than her career as an activist. It was interesting to learn that it was her activism that was the impetus for her famous workout tape.
We did get a few tidbits about her movie career along the way...we learned that she was very drunk when she filmed the nude opening to Barbarella and that she begged Alan J. Pakula to hire someone else for Klute because she just didn't feel she was right for the part.
It was also a little unsettling watching her talk about her marriages to Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, and Ted Turner. It was odd that such an independent spirit would marry three such controlling men, though she does refer to Ted Turner as her "favorite ex-husband."
Commentary is provided along the way by Tom Hayden, Ted Turner, producer Paula Weinstein, Robert Redford, Troy Garity (her son with Hayden), her stepdaughter Nathalie Vadim, and her black adopted daughter Lulu Williams. I thought it was telling that Troy, Nathalie, and Lulu all agreed to appear in this documentary, but Vanessa, her daughter with Roger Vadim, did not. Not that anyone other than Fonda got a lot of screentime anyway, and this screentime went on forever, I didn't think this movie would ever end, but Fonda is a Hollywood legend worthy of the attention, but it just seemed a little over-indulgent to me.
The one of a kind life and career of the legendary Jane Fonda is documented in Jane Fonda in Five Acts, a slightly pretentious and definitely overlong documentary that spends more time focusing on her activism than her acting career and in what seems to be pandering to the star herself, seems to go on forever.
Director Susan Lacy obviously had the star at her ear for every minute of this process of producing this HBO documentary because there is not a moment onscreen here that didn't seem to be pre-approved by the star before making it to the final cut because the actress comes out looking like Superwoman here and I don't think that's an accident. Ironically, the first four acts of the five acts in the life of this alleged super woman were named after her father and her three husbands. We're talking about a woman who has been the ultimate symbol of female empowerment for decades and the director titles sections of her life after the men in her life?
The film does a nice job of profiling the extremely complicated relationship she had with both of her parents. I have to admit I found this part of the documentary very interesting because I have never heard or read anything about Fonda's mother before. I had always seen Henry Fonda photographed with his last wife Shirlee, but had no exposure to his previous marriages. Jane lets us know that she felt emotionally abused and unloved by both of her parents. It's revealed that her mother was what is now known as bipolar and eventually took her own life. It's also revealed that Henry was not exactly the husband or father of the year either...there's a heartbreaking moment in the film where Fonda is looking at a photograph of her entire family and recalls that her father was cheating on her mother at the time and that the family was terribly unhappy when the photograph was taken...one of the documentary's truly moving moments. It's made clear here that everything we saw onscreen between Jane and Henry in On Golden Pond was quite real...she even talks about an unscripted moment she initiated that brought tears to both sets of eyes.
Sadly, the majority of this documentary is the star droning on and on about how unhappy she was and how no one, including her father and three husbands, ever really understood her. The documentary does focus a little too strongly on her "Hanoi Jane" period and how she regrets a lot of what she was doing then, though she doesn't regret the activist spirit that was imbued inside her by her time as Hanoi Jane, but personally, this is water on the bridge or water that no one cares about anymore, and I would have liked this documentary to have concentrated a little more on her than her incredible film career than her career as an activist. It was interesting to learn that it was her activism that was the impetus for her famous workout tape.
We did get a few tidbits about her movie career along the way...we learned that she was very drunk when she filmed the nude opening to Barbarella and that she begged Alan J. Pakula to hire someone else for Klute because she just didn't feel she was right for the part.
It was also a little unsettling watching her talk about her marriages to Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, and Ted Turner. It was odd that such an independent spirit would marry three such controlling men, though she does refer to Ted Turner as her "favorite ex-husband."
Commentary is provided along the way by Tom Hayden, Ted Turner, producer Paula Weinstein, Robert Redford, Troy Garity (her son with Hayden), her stepdaughter Nathalie Vadim, and her black adopted daughter Lulu Williams. I thought it was telling that Troy, Nathalie, and Lulu all agreed to appear in this documentary, but Vanessa, her daughter with Roger Vadim, did not. Not that anyone other than Fonda got a lot of screentime anyway, and this screentime went on forever, I didn't think this movie would ever end, but Fonda is a Hollywood legend worthy of the attention, but it just seemed a little over-indulgent to me.