Joanne Woodward plays a woman going through a midlife crisis. After spending lunch with her diet obsessed Mom, her Mom collapses at the showing of an Igmar Bergman film. With the sudden loss of her Mom and her husband, an eye doctor, diagnosing her with further impaired vision, she falls into a depression of sorts. I guess this sounds like the typical tearjerker 70s TV movie. Well, sort of. She is not poor. She has a nice apartment and owns a farm through her Mom that she inherited it from. However, there is much more to this movie that makes me long for the old days when movies were about seeming mundane and boring things, rather than superhero comic characters like most of the movies out today.
For example, there is a lot of reality to life and relationships in this movie. At her Mom's funeral the younger generation just wants to watch Joe Namath and the Jets. Her brother-in-law basically wants to argue over the inheritance. Her husband just wants to keep peace. I am sure there are some, if not many families, that can identify with this.
Woodward is someone who one cannot decide whether to love or hate. I think that is a good portrayal, because this adds depth to her. She hears from her daughter, an abandoned single Mom, and her son that she has failed as a mother. Her husband is very kind, wise, and patient, but she is not sure whether she ever loved him or not. I think that the point is that marriages do fall into this doldrum, and there is no easy solution.
She goes off to Europe with her husband as a vacation, but it becomes the chance to move full circle and to wind her way out of the crisis she has entered into. There is a beautiful walk through Hyde Park, but in the subway she encounters crowds and has a daydream that her Mom is alive. That evening she has a long talk with husband, and in the end they conclude that maybe she never loved him but just choose him because she lost out on another love in the past and that he seemed like a reliable person headed for success.
The most magnificent part was at the French village. It was a peaceful and scenic village, but her husband reenacts all his experiences as a soldier during WWII in this village. The village that looks beautiful becomes the sight of horror and nightmares just thirty years before. And it is the remembrance of those horrible days of war through her husband's eyes that help her find peace with her realities.
In conclusion, what I like the most about this movie is that it is a look at real people's lives. I think if this movie was made ten or twenty years later, she would have left her husband and found a multi millionaire lover. It was still the time in the early 70s when real movies were made about real lives without all this escapism and fantasia that destroys the vital points of showing that ordinary people's lives struggles can be grim and yet teach invaluable lessons.
For example, there is a lot of reality to life and relationships in this movie. At her Mom's funeral the younger generation just wants to watch Joe Namath and the Jets. Her brother-in-law basically wants to argue over the inheritance. Her husband just wants to keep peace. I am sure there are some, if not many families, that can identify with this.
Woodward is someone who one cannot decide whether to love or hate. I think that is a good portrayal, because this adds depth to her. She hears from her daughter, an abandoned single Mom, and her son that she has failed as a mother. Her husband is very kind, wise, and patient, but she is not sure whether she ever loved him or not. I think that the point is that marriages do fall into this doldrum, and there is no easy solution.
She goes off to Europe with her husband as a vacation, but it becomes the chance to move full circle and to wind her way out of the crisis she has entered into. There is a beautiful walk through Hyde Park, but in the subway she encounters crowds and has a daydream that her Mom is alive. That evening she has a long talk with husband, and in the end they conclude that maybe she never loved him but just choose him because she lost out on another love in the past and that he seemed like a reliable person headed for success.
The most magnificent part was at the French village. It was a peaceful and scenic village, but her husband reenacts all his experiences as a soldier during WWII in this village. The village that looks beautiful becomes the sight of horror and nightmares just thirty years before. And it is the remembrance of those horrible days of war through her husband's eyes that help her find peace with her realities.
In conclusion, what I like the most about this movie is that it is a look at real people's lives. I think if this movie was made ten or twenty years later, she would have left her husband and found a multi millionaire lover. It was still the time in the early 70s when real movies were made about real lives without all this escapism and fantasia that destroys the vital points of showing that ordinary people's lives struggles can be grim and yet teach invaluable lessons.