Albert Schweitzer once observed, "The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." Yet many Americans have trouble coming to terms with the bittersweet truth that nobody can have it all in life. Those who expect too much out of themselves, work, marriage, or their country often suffer chronic depression and nurture rage and resentment rather than hope for the future.
Plenty was adapted for the screen by English playwright David Hare from his prize-winning drama, which was first produced in 1978. This provocative work covers two decades in the life of a young idealist whose exhilarating experiences in France during World War II cannot be matched in postwar England.
During World War II, Susan Traherne (Meryl Streep) is a young British underground courier in Nazi-occupied France. She's an ardent idealist who is invigorated by the nobility and adventure of her work. After aiding Lazar (Sam Neill), a British agent who has just landed in the area by parachute, Susan spends a passionate evening with him — a transcendent experience that she holds dear in her heart.
After the war, everything seems drab and meaningless back in England. While on holiday in Brussels, Susan's male traveling companion (a friend from her days in the French Resistance) dies of a heart attack. She uses her considerable charm to persuade Raymond Brock (Charles Dance), a diplomat at the British embassy, to help arrange the shipment of the body back home. Brock soon falls in love with her and visits on weekends.
Susan shares an apartment with Alice (Tracey Ullman), a bohemian whose humor helps lighten the burden of Susan's dreary job as a shipping clerk. Fed up with her life, she tells Alice: "I want to change everything and I don't know how."
As a start, she dumps Brock and begins working in the advertising field. Susan then chooses Mick (Sting), a working-class man, to help conceive a child out of wedlock. But when the advertising job turns out to be degrading and Mick falls in love with her, Susan plunges into a depression and experiences a mental breakdown.
Brock rescues her, and they are married. Since she can't stand the materialism of England during the 1950s, the Brocks are posted to Jordan. On a visit, Alice is surprised to see that Susan is under medication most of the time. They return to England for the funeral of Sir Leonard Darwin (Sir John Gielgud), Brock's former superior who resigned in protest over British behavior at Suez in 1956.
When Susan refuses to return to Jordan with her husband, his career is badly damaged. He is passed over for promotions as a diplomat elsewhere. Susan's interference at the Foreign Office on his behalf is the final straw. Brock explodes, and she leaves him.
Bereft of hope for the future, Susan reconnects with the past. By chance, she and Lazar meet and spend an evening together at a seedy seaside hotel trying to recreate the magic of their encounter years earlier. But no romance is left: they are both burnt-out cases.
Susan's story ends with a flashback to 1944 in newly liberated France. The young and radiant Susan stands atop a hill in the countryside and tells an old French farmer: "We have grown up. We will improve our world." Joyfully, with high expectations, she says: "There will be days and days and days like this!"
Plenty, directed by Australian Fred Schepisi, offers a highly involving anatomy of disappointment in the life of this graceful, proud, and strong-willed woman. David Hare has written: "The film is called Plenty because it describes a rise and fall. The years of austerity in the late forties are followed by the years of plenty in the mid-fifties, and it's a recurring feeling in the film that it is money that rots people. It was possible to just rise on the great bubble of wealth after the war, and that's just what the characters in the film do."