Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I caught this movie on either AMC or TCM the other night and began to watch it simply for Jane Fonda's and Jason Robards' acting, then was pleasantly surprised to find it had an intriguing story to go along with these great performances, plus Vanessa Redgrave!

The movie is a true story, based on the friendship of Lillian Hellmann (an American playwright) and her European counterpart, sometime med student Julia, of Austrian and British background. The two, we learn in various flashbacks, formed a strong friendship as young girls, with Julia assuming a mentor-inspiring-like role to young Lillian. Cut to the 1920s/30s, when Lillian, frustrated at the lack of creative inspiration as she tries to churn out a new play, goes to visit Julia in Europe, and is soon drawn into an anti-Fascist/anti-Nazi web of intrigue. Through a few relatively simple steps, Lillian helps Julia and her underground group save "perhaps 500" lives.

The movie ends somewhat abruptly and despairingly, a little like the ending to Pollock. This at first offended my aesthetic (which, I admit, is often too bent on the sci-fi/action adventurish Hollywood-side). Then I remembered I was watching a true story. And hell, in presenting a true story, you can't exactly change the ending to an emotionally-satisfying high-energy climax if THAT JUST WASN'T WHAT HAPPENED.

So this movie, in my epinion, ultimately succeeds in creating in-depth characters that we truly care about. There's also a sense of masterful suspense in a train sequence in the second half of the film - without relying on the typical Hollywood conventions of car chases, killers leaping from behind staircases, etc., etc. The movie, rather than embracing the typical a-b-c plotline, shows the journey of Lillian Hellmann's character, as she starts out a self-involved playwright in a hapless relationship, to her taking important, if small, political action in Europe, to her ultimately letting go of "Julia" and all her friend means to her, because it's useless to hang on.

There is also a lesser-developed subplot with Lillian and her decades-older lover played by Jason Robards. Though this subplot doesn't have the emotional resonance that the main plot does (it's just a subplot, after all) the actors do their best to play well in problematic scenes. There are also some scenes with Lillian taking flack from her aristocratic colleagues who are SO ready to cling to offer their opinions on anything in the CULTURAL AMERICAN world, but balk at expressing feelings at the human rights abuses taking shape in Europe.



Recommended: Yes

Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older