What The.. - Plenty (1985) Discussion

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

It is about the grand expactations for world change and betterment following the conclusion of World War 2 and how those who were fighting as idealists in the resistance, were let down in the post war years innterms of these expectations. Much stayed the same in society. Streep's character never reconciles her hope with what was reality and unravels in a way that harms those around her. The DVD has a good explanation by the director.

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[–] TrentinaNE 15 years ago

My impression of Susan's real problem (upon watching the movie years ago) was that she was mentally unbalanced. Political disappointment has affected many people without driving them 'round the bend.

I might give Plenty another spin one of these days. I'm about due for a Streep-a-thon.

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[–] RoIn100 15 years ago

Netshopper's answer is spot on. I will simply add that it is also about the disillusionment of how society unfolded in the years after WW II, and how many who fought in that war saw their idealism overrun by the self absorption and materialism that took over (and is still very much present today). The movie can also be seen as an allegory of the slow decline of the British empire.

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[–] Noir-It-All 14 years ago

I wonder if she had post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne

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[–] stevewsn 12 years ago

I totally agree with RoIN100's opinion, the movie can be seen as an allegory of the slow decline of the British empire. The movie's (artistic) success, of course, majorly comes from Meryl Streep's performance. Here, she's so breathtakingly beautiful and beliveable as a character who doesn't know what she wants in her daily-routine life and constantly goes back to her old, glorious, excting past to seek comfort.

Streep is just amazing here..she's not afraid of playing the roles that are not about heroes (heroines). She is one of the very few who could play this kind of multi-dementional role and still win's the majority of the audience's heart (check out her box office record in recent years, as of 2012!!)

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[–] treeline1 15 years ago

I wish I could help you, but I dozed off so many times I have no idea what it was about. A woman is in the war, the war ends, and 20 years later, it's still over. In between she talks a lot.

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[–] onepotato2 15 years ago

Thanks for playing potato2 and CG. We have some lovely parting gifts for you including the entire Will Ferrell dvd set.

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[–] cookiela2001 14 years ago

<< My impression of Susan's real problem (upon watching the movie years ago) was that she was mentally unbalanced. >>

I was kind of taken aback when near the end she says her problem is that she likes to lose control.

Except for a few isolated incidents, it seemed like her character was very MUCH in control. Quite rigid.

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[–] onepotato2 14 years ago

There is a world of ideas out there that 80 percent of people will never even stumble across. Lucky for you, most movies are made for non-thinkers.

Watch those movies. You'll be happier with movies that deliver sensations, not ideas.

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[–] darlingmissmarple 11 years ago

I'm coming to this discussion very late but I just got this film from netflix.
I thought I was hanging on in trying to follow this film until the last scenes of it. When it returned to the scene of the early part of the film, I was totally lost.My sense was what have I been watching? I need to see it a few more times, I think. Meryl Streep was fabulous in her role. I agree with an earlier poster that I can think of no other actress who could have handled this role. I also think she was stunningly beautiful I think it was well cast all around. I got the general idea that Streep's character was a restless soul under her skin. That was made clear but by the end of the film I felt I hadn't gotten the "big" idea. "Plenty" intrigued me and I will watch it again and it may be a DVD that I will want to own. The ending just stunned me because I didn't understand it at all.

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[–] WarpedRecord 11 years ago

I was stunned by the ending as well, confused as to whether it reflected optimism or denial. Turns out it was the latter.

Thanks to the bonus feature with Fred Schepisi, I understand and appreciate the film a bit more, though it shouldn't take an interview with the director to achieve that. This is a beautifully directed, well-acted film about a woman's longing and how she uses the men in her life unintentionally (or is it intentionally?). With a lesser cast, I wouldn't have cared at all, but Meryl, Tracy, Sting and the rest of the cast made me care enough to give this 7/10 stars.

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[–] decroissance 11 years ago

This movie is one of my top ten favorite films. I haven't seen it for 25 years about, but what I got out of it, theme-wise, was the vacuity of modern life. She needed meaning -- in her own life and in her society in general. She had that during the war, but afterward, all her society cared about was materialism and empty distraction. She hated that. She wanted life to be more than consumption and having parties.

I felt the same way about western culture and still do. I related to her character completely. The scene where she says: "There's plenty!" in such an ironic tone sums up her frustration. Everyone has too much and that's all they care about. No one cares about things that matter. There's no meaning in their world.

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[–] mercycroft 8 years ago

THANK YOU, decroissance!

You must be a woman, lol. Because, as a woman, I completely agree. Susan wasn't mentally unbalanced at all. She wanted more from life than the doldrums the status quo offered. A woman ahead of her time in every way -- taking lovers when she wanted, trying to have a baby outside of marriage. Even Tracey Ullman's character says she wants to start a home for domestic violence survivors. No wonder no one in the 80s liked it. The ladies didn't know their place. Or want it.

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[–] waldenpond88 11 years ago

That's what we were thinking, too.
After 75 minutes we gave up, it just got too weird and too hard to follow.
All the time Meryl Streep's character is moving to another apartment, but you don't really get a feeling for the country (is she in France or Belgium or the UK?) and even less of the year it's taking place after her next move.

If Fred Schepisi would have put in a year and the country with each new part of the film, so that the audience has a chance to follow the story (and not getting distracted by asking yourself all the time, where does this take place and what year is it now?), it would have helped a lot.
I wonder if she did run into Ed Neill again...

Anyway, 6 stars are hopelessly over-rated, so we rated it 2 stars, because of Streep and the cinematographer.

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[–] ConDeuce 11 years ago

I saw “Plenty” only once on videotape (remember that?) back in 1986 or so. Great film. As for what it’s about, you can read the posts from netshopper-2, RoIn100 and stevenwsn.

The grand theme is how post WWII England went returned to its old ways much to the chagrin of the main character, Susan Traherne. She imagined, she hoped that the end of the war would bring real, meaningful, even radical change to England and the world but she fails to realize that there are forces operating against change. Those forces were once on the same side during the war but are now slowly moving apart and she basically can’t handle it. Though it has been a long time since I saw it, I remember the film vividly. The ending was sad. She is with Lazar again in a repeat of their tryst at the beginning of the film. Now she is rather washed up and dreary, smoking pot and looking disheveled. She barely hears a word that Lazar is saying to her. Then there is a shot of her standing in a field on a beautiful, sunny morning and she says excitedly something like “they’ll be days and days like this.” The ending shows how hopeful she once was contrasting it with all that we have seen. The final scene is the definition of irony.

Great film.

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[–] ibbi 10 years ago

I like your summation, and I love the ideas behind it, but I think the films execution from a writing, and directorial standpoint was generally lacking.

___
http://tinyurl.com/m746w8t

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[–] lakealice 10 years ago

I agree that the only point seemed to be to show off Streep's flawless complexion ad nauseam. I have seldom seen such a disjointed, unfathomable movie (well, I have, but this was one of the worst). This is obvious from the fact that the "point" has to be explained in detail by the director and people on this board to those of us too dense to get it. Streep's French accent was off-I could have done better. I definitely thought she was bi-polar--not all the high-falutin' political explanations of her behavior and the abstruse "meaning"-- which were not at all evident in the movie.

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[–] akeshishian17969 10 years ago

Well, I just saw it for the first time and liked it a great deal. And I didn't need to watch an interview with the director to work out was going on or what the film was about. All one has to do is - gasp - pay attention.

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[–] DBloodnok 10 years ago

I think it's a great film (and a great play). But I think that it really helps to be British and to be of a certain age and/or to have a fairly good knowledge of post-war British history to understand the film. I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, it's just my opinion.

One poster above makes the point that it's hard to establish when (and where) things are happening. I think that's a fair point, but for a Brit who fills the above criteria, it's easy.

Chapter 1 / Susan and Brock #1. This would be London just after the end of the war, 1947-48, when things were truly terrible - harder than the war for the populace.

Chapter 2 / Susan and Mick and the baby pact. The Coronation of Elizabeth II - 1953 (easy)

Chapter 3 / Susan in advertising. UK, 1955 - the economy was taking off, consumerism and the first commercial (ie, non-BBC) TV in Britain.

Chapter 4 / the dinner party. UK. The Suez Crisis, 1956 (again, easy)

Chapter 5 / Susan and Brock #2. Jordan. Very late 1950s. This is more opaque, but it shows Britain focusing on commercial interests in the pro-British parts of the Middle East, post Suez, through the councils of the Arab League.

Chapter 6 / Susan and Brock #3 (going nuts at the Foreign Office). London, UK. Very early 1960s, 1960-1961. Brock is shown working on Britain's (first, later to be rejected by De Gaulle) application to join the European Economic Community.

The socio-political backstory is the movie (really) - it's all about Britain's relative and absolute decline after the war , despite all the promise (of plenty) after 6 years of loss and hardship from 1939-1945. And that's who Susan is - an emblem of Britain, in which lies the tragedy of the story.

"Someone has been tampering with Hank's memories."

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[–] seapoppyca 9 years ago

I agree that the only point seemed to be to show off Streep's flawless complexion ad nauseam. I have seldom seen such a disjointed, unfathomable movie (well, I have, but this was one of the worst). This is obvious from the fact that the "point" has to be explained in detail by the director and people on this board to those of us too dense to get it. Streep's French accent was off-I could have done better. I definitely thought she was bi-polar--not all the high-falutin' political explanations of her behavior and the abstruse "meaning"-- which were not at all evident in the movie.

I just watched it for the first time, and that was definitely my take-away. I just spent some 2 hours watching an admittedly very beautiful but mentally unstable woman bitch and moan about how empty, meaningless and materialistic life was when everything she did insured that's how her life would be. And then she made others around her miserable because she didn't have either the guts or brains to live differently. Made me think Susan must have stumbled into the Resistance by accident.

I swear, when she threatened to kill herself, my first thought was "finally!". Sadly, she just kept on living, feeling sorry for herself and acting like a spoiled 2-yr old. I can take a character who isn't likeable as long as they're interesting -- whiny crazy people aren't interesting, even when they're being played by Meryl Streep.

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[–] spookyrat1 9 years ago

Streep's French accent was off-I could have done better.

Good grief! She is playing an Englishwoman working with the French Resistance during WW2. Are you really suggesting that her French accent wasn't French enough for a non- French character? She wasn't playing an official translator.

Where I do agree with you is that she plays Susan Traherne, as a quietly unbalanced woman, whose life is irreparably changed by her war-time experiences.🐭

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