I cannot stand this movie.

It was a very powerful movie.

I don't like Jane Fonda or Henry Fonda due to their liberal positions on some things but no one can deny the performance of Jane Fonda in the Dollmaker or Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men. These actors had a grasp of something significant in order to bring this power to these characters.

I grew up as a non-Christian but I think I became a Christian mostly because of what you just described here. However, you don't always see this in Christians (that's a fact most Christians can't reconcile or acknowledge.)

You will sort of see beyond the seen sometimes, see people where there is joy and yet infinite sorrow and age in their eyes, a strength and a weakness unlike anything you really ever see. You see eternity in the smile of a young child or the sigh of a grandparent near death.

The Bible says that man is not to make graven images or idols for himself and we think this is because (as scripture does say) God is a jealous God. But this is not God's way, He makes this restriction because He knows our hearts are like those of children, capable of infinite kindness and infinite horror, often seeing only the surface of what is really there.

He bids us to see what you described here, to see God in more than a silly carving of "Jesus" (not that any of us know what that is - typically we make him a white guy with long hair who is easy on the eyes but he was a middle eastern man who the bible says was unremarkable).

God asks us to see the beauty of a world that often is bent on destroying itself and to grab joy and grief but not to hold them too tightly to live and experience them with thankfulness - both with thankfulness.

That's what I love about this movie. I should hunt down the book someday. The song at the beginning is perfect and I think it represents the central premise of the movie which you described. In the old days people lived lives of daily grief and toil but if you look at modern research into "happiness" done by psychologists and sociologists, they usually find that people like Gert were happier.

I wish I knew more people, I wish I could travel the world and meet people and hear their stories. The best Christians I know are people who are not quick to condemn folk singers, artists and poets, but recognize that the beauty they see is true, even if they don't attribute it to God. All beauty, whether it be sorrow or joy, points to God. Though we so much want to see God that we are tempted to create gods in whatever way we can, any halfway wise person knows God is not easily defined, and certainly not with a block of cherry wood.



What hump? 

I read the book a long time ago. And of course I've seen the movie numerous times. The film stays very close to the book in my view. The Dollmaker movie was one of the highest rated TV movies of all time when in aired on ABC in 1984. Jane won a well deserved Emmy award.