Jane Fonda in Five Acts (2018) Reviews

• She is not afraid to be herself,

  leamek2018-10-01

  The documentary let us know her: her honesty, grit, and courage to accept her shadows. Fonda is, for me, a teacher and her course is life.

• Jane Fonda: Enter Stage Left

  jadepietro2018-10-01

  GRADE: B THIS FILM IS RECOMMENDED. IN BRIEF: A meditative documentary on the life of Jane Fonda: actress, activist, health guru, and entrepreneur. JIM'S REVIEW: Talented documentarian Susan Lacy (Spielberg) has once again set her sights on a show biz icon. With her most recent film, she captures Jane Fonda's complex and mercurial life: Jane Fonda: In Five Acts. She structures her film into five stages in Ms. Fonda's life. With title cards titled Henry, her childhood and early times with her father; Vadim (Roger), Tom (Hayden), and Ted (Turner), life with her ex-husbands, and the final chapter named Jane, her later years, the film explores her life as actress, activist, health guru and entrepreneur. There is much to learn about Ms. Fonda's career by hearing some surprising details about her backstory: her fractured relationship with her unloving father and troubled bonding with her mother, her early start on Broadway and film, her romances with the men in her life who molded her into various roles, her rise to activist causes, her interest in wellness, and her subsequent ventures into producing and mass-marketing herself. Interviews, archival photos and videos, and film clips fill out her story very well. The film is well researched and the actress is open and honest with her facts and opinions. ("I grew up in the shadows of a national monument...my dad!") But at times, some scenes seem manipulative and staged for empathic effect. Later portions of the film are a direct mea culpa to her neglected daughter, Vanessa, and a plea for forgiveness for some (not all) of her statements and behavior during the Vietnam War when many Americans considered her to be a traitor and nicknaming her "Hanoi Jane". One also wishes more film clips of her earlier films were shown. What we see on the screen is a larger-than-life profile of a woman fulfilling her life journey...waiting for Act 6 to begin. An insightful film worthy of your time.

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• My new role model.. that's why Jane made those workout videos? for activism funding? who knew!

  ruthshen2018-09-29

  Wow..in tears now. this biography narrated by Jane Fonda re-introduced me to her. Who knew she's such a role model? She seemed to have it all, but all the time struggling with confidence and self-identity. She grew slowly and morphed with the 3 husbands, acting roles, and changing the world around her. Jane Fonda in 5 acts.

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• The sins of the father

  AlsExGal2018-11-25

  When the Bible talks about the sins of the father being visited on the children to the third and fourth generation, that is probably not God being vindictive so much as it is a statement of fact, and it certainly applies here, at least to the second generation. Jane Fonda is a little girl lost. She accomplished a lot in life for a little girl lost, and made one - even by her admission now - big mistake in her visit to Hanoi. My dad called her "Hanoi Jane" up until his death earlier this year, and he was 92 and didn't even fight in Vietnam. It is telling that the acts of her life are named after other people - Henry, Vadim, Tom, Ted - I didn't see the fifth act named. Even now, at eighty, Jane Fonda seems like a person in search of herself. Let's start at the first act, the root of all of her problems - Henry - as in Henry Fonda, her father. She said he was distant, without emotion, that she felt she always had to act like they were the perfect family even though dad was absent emotionally and could only show emotion in terms of a role in a film and mom was continually depressed at least in part because dad was having affairs with much younger women. So Jane Fonda grows up pretty much without a personality. Even her first acting teacher admitted to her that when he first met her he had never met such a conventional and boring young woman. But she had acting talent - so much talent that she won two Best Actress Oscars while dad was waiting to win his first Best Actor Oscar. I just couldn't stop being impressed by the irony of her life. Growing up as she did, the personalities of those around her were impressed strongly upon her own, this being particularly true of her first two husbands and of Simone Signoret, a famous French actress that she befriended while married to Roger Vadim. Also, her children now complain about some of the same things that she complained about concerning her dad. Her son by Tom Hayden, Troy, said that they lived in communal housing, that their vacations were wherever his parents were doing protests or events, that he took a backseat to their activism. Jane herself said she would look into the eyes of her daughter by Roger Vadim when she was a toddler and she would see her looking at her as though asking "Why don't you check in? Where are you emotionally?". The curse of Hank Fonda. This is an encyclopedic work by HBO on Fonda, with her doing the bulk of the talking. If you want to learn about a subject, after all, first ask the subject! Just one more thing. The documentary opens on Richard Nixon, in one of his famous tapes, talking in 1971 about "What is wrong with Jane Fonda?" and how Henry Fonda seems like such a nice man. What is up with a guy, an American President, who documents every word he ever said on tape, tells everybody that there are tapes, and then dares the courts to take them? A subject for another time and another documentary.

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• The life journey of a common woman

  BasicLogic2018-09-26

  I'd like to compliment HBO did such a profound painting of Jane Fonda, a documentary was so subtly made, allowing us to take a long journey with her step by step, stage by stage, seeing her as seeing ourselves from childhood to the final chapter of our life, struggled like a lost soul trying to find the right or the better path of fulfillment of life. Ms. Fonda is a genuine person, a larger-than-life soul, a part of our civilization through some of our bitter and cruel past of the darkest era and continued to nowadays ridiculous political environment. Her struggles for a better and more humane America seemed to be so worthless that only sparkled a tiny candle light in her life process. Her truthfulness as a human being is somewhat the nowadays Americans who should take a closer look to themselves and, who should ask themselves how come we've lost our decency to ourselves and to all the other people in the world; how come we Americans have become so obnoxious and arrogant, so naive and yet the same time so evil. Ms. Fonda has spent her whole life trying to find her real self unsuccessfully until her final chapter is what we should learn and be reminded. To be true to ourself and to others should be the most important principle of our life. Highly recommended.

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