'Jane Fonda in Five Acts' is a fitting tribute to polarizing icon

Jane Fonda is a polarizing figure, which is pretty amazing considering the fact that she is an 80-year-old Hollywood institution at some point. Her controversial photo op in North Vietnam during the height of the Vietnam war have made her one of the most hated (and admired) actresses of all time.

Of course, that fact that in addition to that she has been a phenomenal actress is sometimes lost on people. Unfortunately for her, although her '70s and early 80's output especially (films like Klute, The China Syndrome, Coming Home and On Golden Pond) has largely not had a lot of staying power with modern audiences. Of her many hit films, perhaps only 9 to 5 is widely recognized by people under 30, and even that may be a stretch.

The new documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts does a great job of reminding viewers of what a remarkable career she had, and an improbable one, considering the fact that she had to emerge from the under the show of a domineering acting legend father -- Henry Fonda.

The expansive doc, which includes thoughtful, candid and moving recollections from Fonda herself, should make all must the most hardcore Fonda skeptics look at her in a new light. She was the product of a very dysfunctional home, with a father who who could be cold and cruel (I still admire him tremendously as a talent, but this doc leaves you thinking he was quite a monster) and a mother battling mental illness.

She developed insecurities about her appearance that continue to dog her to this day. And while Fonda makes no apologies for her self-evident plastic surgeries she is bittersweet about them, and it's clear that her looks will perhaps permanently play a factor in how she determines her self worth.

What the film demonstrates best though, is that Fonda is a master of reinvention -- from dutiful daughter, to upcoming ingenue, to sex symbol, to respected actress, to rabble-rousing freedom fighter, to popular star of exercise videos, to the wife of a mogul and so on, and so on.

The film can be faulted for placing a little bit too much emphasis on the men in her life (from her father to former husbands Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden and Ted Turner), although even she concedes that until maybe just over a decade ago she too tended to define herself based on who she was romantically linked to at the time.

But it does succeed wildly in showing what a sensitive, complex and compelling person Fonda was and is. Whether you like every film or every choice she made, you cannot argue she is some dilettante who was simply rebelling against her stuff shirt daddy. This is a vital, intellectually engaged person who seems tireless at a time when most of her peers have long ago retired or faded into obscurity.

Fonda is very much current -- appearing in a variety of films and anchoring her own show, Grace and Frankie, on Netflix. And based on her interviews in this, if nothing else, she is still super sharp and wise about the strengths and weaknesses of her public life.

As she has for several years now, she is believably apologetic about how much regrets posing on that Vietnamese military hardware nearly 50 years ago. Some will clearly never forgive her no matter how many times she says she's sorry -- and that's of course their prerogative -- but it'd be hard after seeing this doc not to acknowledge that she also contributed a hell of a lot to the women's movement, the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement and just the craft of acting, period.