Stanley & Iris

A film set in a factory town. Iris works in a bakery. Her husband has just died and her sister, her brother-in-law and two children are in the house. Her handbag is stolen on a bus. A man runs after the thief and brings it back. Stanley works in the same factory's kitchen. Quiet, careful, and he keeps everything in his head. One day he is dismissed. The reason is this: he cannot read or write. Iris works it out. He does not fill in a form, does not read a sign, and finds an excuse every time. She offers to teach him. From there the film is a story about lessons. Letters, syllables, a kitchen table and the same words again and again. Stanley refuses at first. He is ashamed and covers it with anger. He has an elderly father. He is forced to put him in a home, and the reason is the same: he cannot fill in a single paper on his own. Stanley is in fact an inventor. He builds mechanisms in his head and can write none of them down. What the narrative is interested in is not love but access: its idea is that illiteracy is not a question of intelligence but of a door, and that with that door shut no ability is of any use. Iris's own life is a separate line. She is in mourning, the money at home does not stretch, and nobody helps her. The source is Pat Barker's novel Union Street and the adaptation is fairly free. The production designer Joel Schiller built Stanley's invention in the film as a working device; it is a cake-cooling mechanism and Schiller later patented it. Groups of picketers turned up daily during filming. Veterans' groups tried to block locations over Jane Fonda's stance during the Vietnam era; hundreds of supporters gathered at the same places. The film failed commercially. A twenty-three million dollar production took five point eight million at the box office. It was Martin Ritt's last film; he died ten months after its release. It was the last film for the writers Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch as well. The music is by John Williams. Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro, Swoosie Kurtz and Martha Plimpton are in the cast. Martin Ritt directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet, working-class American drama. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the narrative is very slow and distributes its emotional weight too neatly.