HotToastyRag
Stanley & Iris takes a stab at a very overlooked topic: adult illiteracy. When Jane Fonda finds out Robert De Niro has survived his entire life hiding his illiteracy, she sets out to help him. She teaches him how to read, and they become friends. He's shy and she's still grieving over her late husband, so romance isn't in the cards—at first. . .Even though this isn't a film I have any desire to watch over and over again, it really is a good movie. Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch write some interesting and realistic situations in the beginning of the film that show how Robert De Niro could get away with not being able to read. When the friendship between the two leads turns into something more, the love scenes are once again written realistically. Jane isn't ready for love, and her character's actions are consistent with her heart's needs. I won't spoil anything, but there's a scene where Jane sobs uncontrollably because she isn't ready to give her heart to someone new, and it's extremely touching. Many times, Hollywood produces a love story aimed at younger people who haven't suffered real heartbreaks yet and can approach love with bright eyes. Stanley & Iris is an adult love story. Anyone who's loved and lived to tell the tale will appreciate this movie.
Emil Bakkum
Sharyn Wolf discusses the film "Stanley and Iris" in her book "Guerrilla dating tactics". The book is definitely the best thing since the introduction of De Ruyter's hundreds and thousands. She mentions the film only in passing, and does not actually recommend it, but to me that incitement was enough. By the way, Wolf starts her discussion with a reference to the (non-existing) love life of the Cartwright family in Bonanza! This is really poking in my very first life experiences! Stanley and Iris has some positive points in anticipation. The writers also created the film Norma Rae (read my review). Jane Fonda and Robert DeNiro helped to change the perspective on the war in Vietnam. I can honestly say that the result has not disappointed me. The play is credible and moving without becoming sentimental. It was a pleasant surprise, that the story is also a portrayal of the bitter poverty among marginalized workers (perhaps working poor sounds more familiar). It is at least as much a drama about social conditions as a love tale. Many scenes unfold in a cookie factory. To a large extent the personal problems originate from the drawbacks of the society. Some people just don't get true opportunities. It's amazing there on the shady side. Nonetheless, the script also dives deep into the personal characters. The result is satisfying, considering that empathy comes naturally. Can I present any hidden layers or meanings in this review? That depends on what you want to see. I advise to look more than once (an intention not yet proved by myself). I would not be surprised if on a closer examination the narrative is quite ambivalent. Just an example which stands out: near the end Stanley gets an excellent job in another state. Yes, again the American dream turns into reality! Amazing, you never get fed up with it. This is so much the usual pattern: of course he wil forget his sweetheart on the assembly line, who has helped him advance, and marry a rich woman. I will not disclose the end, there are already too many spoilers, so go and see for yourself.
erik-185
This is a complex film that explores the effects of Fordist and Taylorist modes of industrial capitalist production on human relations. There are constant references to assembly line production, where workers are treated as cogs in a machine, overseen by managers wielding clipboards, controlling how much hair the workers leave exposed, and firing workers (Stanley) who meet all criteria (as his supervisor says, are always on time, are hard workers, do good work) but who may in some unspecified future make a mistake. This system destroys families - Stanley has to send his father to a nursing home (where he quickly dies) after Stanley loses his job. Iris' daughter is a single teen mother who drops out of high school to take a job in the plant. References are made to the fact that now, with declining wages, both partners need to work, the implication being that there's nobody left at home to care for the kids. Iris' husband is dead from an illness, and with the multiple references in the film about the costs of medical care, the viewer must wonder if he might have lived with better and more costly care. Iris' brother in law gets abusive after yet another unsuccessful day at the unemployment office when his wife yells at him for buying a beer with her savings instead of leaving it for her face lift and/or teeth job (even the working class with no stake in conventional bourgeois notions of perfection and beauty buy into them). The one reference to race in the film is through a black factory line worker whose husband is in jail (presumably, he's also black, and black men suffer disproportionally high incarceration rates). She remarks that he, like her, "is doing time" - her family is composed of a prisoner and a wage slave.Stanley, however, still believes in human relations and is therefore for most of the film outside of the system of Fordist capitalism. He cares for his father in spite of the fact that it was his father's traveling salesman job that resulted in his illiteracy - he has not yet reduced human relations to a purely instrumental contract, as Iris' brother in law does (suggesting that he "married the wrong sister"). He does not, as Iris says, conform to the work-eat-sleep routine of everyone else; rather, he uses technology and the techniques of industrial production in an artisanal and creative way, in a sort of Bauhaus ideal. This was the dream of early modernists and 1920's socialists (such as the Bauhaus) - to use technology to provide for all basic needs, allowing for more free time for creative human work and fuller human relations. He is also outside of traditional gender relations. He cooks, he cleans, he cares for his family, and he knows how to iron. Iris, on the other hand, lives in a traditionally male role - she's a factory worker, the mains source of income for her (extended) family, and she brings Stanley into the public realm, traditionally off-limits to women. By teaching him to read and write, she gives him access to the world of knowledge, also traditionally gendered male.Literacy here is used as a metaphor for the (traditionally masculine) public realm and the systems of circulation (monetary, vehicular, cultural) that enable participation in the public realm. Without this access, Stanley is feminized - the jobs open to him are cooking and cleaning. He is excluded from all regular circulations, unable to participate in the monetary (can't open a bank account), in the vehicular (can't get a driver's license, can't ride the bus), and in the social (he asks if he exists if he can't write his name).After learning to read, he grabs books on auto repair, farming, and spirituality (the Bible). The Word of God is therefore relativized, placed on the same value plane as how-to books. In fact, organized religion in general is only very occasionally present - the Bible also appears on a dresser as the camera pans to find Stanley and Iris having sex. It is, however, acknowledged as a moral force - Iris, clearly a character devoted to living a "good" life, mentions at the beginning of the film that her rosary was among the objects lost in a purse snatching.Once able to read, he enters the system and lands a managerial position with a health care plan, a car, and a house, taking his place at the head of the family, the breadwinner. Presumably, he's an industrial designer, dreaming up products that will require others enduring the drudgery of the assembly line to produce. This ending, probably the only bit of conventional Hollywood in the film, is so incongruous with all that has come before that I at least wonder if it wasn't forced in by some Studio exec suddenly worried about the lack of a feel-good ending and its potential effect on the bottom line.Now that, according to the pundits, we've comfortably moved on to post-industrial capitalism, the film also has a slightly nostalgic feel, as though we needed the historical distance to really analyze what happened during that period. Nevertheless, it's highly recommended - at least if you want to exercise your brain. Disregard the ending, and it's close to a perfect 10.
michael1951
This movie just doesn't work in the end, and that's a real shame because it's got a good premise and stars the greatest of all actresses.WARNING. SPOILER. I'll keep it vague, but I can't critique this film without discussing the ending.Keeping it vague, let's just say that this ending is so "pie in the sky" as to be totally unbelievable. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with "happy endings," but they have to be realistic and this one isn't.It's a shame, because Jane Fonda is simply the greatest of all actresses. The only other actress who has the same breadth as a dramatist and as a comedienne was Kate Hepburn, and she lacks Jane's emotional depth. Jane's played her "working class feminist" roles as a comedienne in "Nine to Five" where she employs the "facial English" and wide-eyed astonishment of "Cat Ballou." And in one of her greatest films, "The Dollmaker," she plays the "working class feminist" dramatically in a film that has a "happy ending" but one that's also realistic.I see "Stanley and Iris" as the third in Jane's "working class feminist" trilogy, and it really is a shame that it's spoiled by a fairy-tale ending. The premise is really interesting, that Iris is just in such a funk of a depression and suffering from such low self-esteem after her husband's death that she winds up in a dead-end factory job and allows herself to be used by a no-good-nik brother-in-law who sponges off Iris and abuses her sister. That Stanley's caught in dead-end jobs because of his illiteracy. That Stanley and Iris finally make it together and that with Iris's help Stanley achieves some modicum of success.But keep the ending realistic. That's where "The Dollmaker" succeeds and "Stanley and Iris" fails. I can't say more without creating too much of a spoiler.
