Plenty

David Hare's brilliant stage play has been translated beautifully to the screen. The peculiar English trait of natural melancholy radiates throughout this sad exercise of seeing all through the lens of British class consciousness, repression and despair. The color photography, the performances, the stifling framing of the widescreen shots all add to the oppressive beauty of a story about the self-destruction of a preternaturally beautiful woman. Mery Streep has never been better before or since. Hare makes her intellectual acuity a weapon against herself as she sees through all the ghastly pretenses of a corroding Empire. No insight, no beauty of body, no letting go of formality and pretense can save her from herself. Feminism itself is taken to the burning stake as Streep's character thrashes, Hedda Gabbler like, against walls and prohibitions beyond her understanding. Rarely has such condemnation looked so ravishing.

In "Plenty" (***1/2). Meryl Streep gives one of her greatest performances in the complex role of "Susan Traherne", an idealistic young Englishwoman whose compulsive need to stir things up comes in conflict with a crippling lack of courage. We follow her life from her days in the French Resistance at the end of World War II to her professional and emotional decline during the 60's. Her key line: "I want to change the world, but I don't know how." The supporting cast, production and direction are superb, and the score by Bruce Smeaton is hauntingly beautiful. The character functions as both a metaphor for postwar England and a real flesh and blood human being, although it's a flaw that we don't learn more about her family background, apparently an upper class one, which might have contributed more to an understanding of her later, often perverse, behavior. The only two people she seems to have in the world are Charles Dance, playing her long-suffering diplomat husband and Tracy Ullmann, wonderful as her free-spirited best friend, probably the kind of person Susan would like to have been if it were not for her "fatal weakness": she likes "losing control." This film has been newly released in its original Panavision dimension on DVD and looks terrific. Seeing it the way it should be seen only enhances my opinion that it's one of the most underrated movies of the 80's.

"Plenty" is a film I watch as often as other people watch "It's A Wonderful Life" or the first "Terminator", yes, I know, I must be a very strange guy. I was a teenager when I saw "Plenty" on stage at the National Theater in London. I remembered the play vividly, Kate Nelligan's performance was sensational. Fred Schepsi's "Plenty" has a totally unique life of its own. We're allowed into Susan's mind and Susan has Meryl Streep's face. Her performance makes her character's intellect visible, cinematic. Intimidating, fascinating, extraordinarily beautiful performance. I think David Hare has written here one of the best female characters I've ever seen and Meryl Streep strips it of every pretense. She can lie even to herself but not to us. It is mesmerizing at times. A ping pong ball going through the character's brain as she listens. Alone, so alone in the world. She never expresses it with words although she, I think, is totally aware of it. The infuriating sense of being incapable to adapt, to belong. Wanting and not wanting. Mesmerizing! As if this wasn't enough, Tracey Ullman, Charles Dance, Sting, Ian McKellen and John Gielgud giving, perhaps one of the best film performances during the final part of of his life I felt rather lonely in my love for this film until I started reading some of the comments posted here and realized I wasn't all alone in the world. Nice to meet you all.

"Plenty" needs to be seen on a big screen in a theatre; more than most, this is a film that suffers in its translation to a TV screen. (Among other things, there are scenes that are simply ruined in the format change--like the hilarious scene of Streep and Sting on a sofa as Queen Elizabeth's coronation plays live on the tellie!) Sound is also important to fully appreciating the film--like the constant reminders of the sound of opening parachutes that echo throughout the story.

It's easy to understand why the film was not a box office success; it focuses on a woman who is not terribly likeable, but I contend that it is a movie rich in observations that transcend post-war Britain and the borish woman who develops in that milieu. "Plenty" is (among other things) about passion, diplomacy, memory, self-deception and the great expectations that are so easily squashed in our unheroic modern world. The film (and Hare's play before it) revolves around a crucial scene brilliantly played by a startlingly mad Streep and Ian McKellan's icily insightful foreign service officer--well past the film's mid-point. After his long-in-coming dose of reality, Streep's Susan takes a tailspin into the movie's melancholy conclusion. It's not an easy film to "enjoy," but the uniformly brilliant performances from Streep, Charles Dance, Tracy Ullman and John Gielgud make the film fascinating to watch and rewarding to have experienced.

This is one film which has grown on me since I saw it on main circuit. It is an intelligent film, which demands a lot of active viewing. Aided with an incisive script by David Hare, it looks at Britain's history from the end of WWII, through to Queen Elizabeth's coronation the Suez Crisis, all counterpointed by the lead character, Susan Treherne (played, in I think one of her best moments, by Meryl Streep.) The film plays on the word "Plenty" and the hope for UK after WWII that there would be plenty - in itself ironic. It is also a study of a woman afflicted by bipolar disorder (manic-depression). This is not the focus of the film; in fact, it is never explicitly stated.... At the time portrayed, psychiatric illness wasn't acknowledged - it tended to be swept under the carpet.

Streep imbues Susan with a dignity, despite her liking to "lose control"; there are excellent performances by Sam Neill (Lazar, her war-time "love"), Tracey Ullman, Sting, Charles Dance (her long-suffering husband) and John Gielgud (as the diplomat who takes the fall for the Suez Crisis.) It's not an easy film, but worth watching and discussing. It must be one of the most underrated films on IMDb.

Do yourself a favour, ACTIVELY engage with this. Don't let this film be overshadowed by Meryl Streep's other films of this time, like the overrated Out of Africa. They don't hold a torch to this film!