I don't remember being this satisfied by the heaping helpings being offered by any other streaming service in recent history, including the last time I had a dalliance with HBO Max, as I am now. I mean, how many posts already have I made in the past month so far regaling the juicy morsels I've tucked into?
Olive Kitteridge was an HBO miniseries that aired just over a decade ago, itself an adaptation of a novel written almost a decade prior to that, so this drama that I've suddenly found is certainly nothing new. Why hadn't I seen this before? I guess I could say that about a lot of the other offerings I've discovered over the past couple weeks since a lot of the stuff I'm enjoying is on the older side.
Yes I watched this in one sitting, but I wouldn't call it "binging" since it's not an entire TV series; it plays out like a long four chapter dramatic movie.
As usual, I'm not going to get into a traditional review where I give a synopsis of the plot and run-down of the various characters, there are plenty of other sites for that, even though, of course, due to its age, they've faded due to time. But let me just say -- this one sticks with you. Or at least it stuck with me.
Dysfunctional family dynamics, sleepy New England town set in the seventies through to the first decade of the new century, and a whole lot of mental illness going on. Or is it mental illness?
The movie kind of asks, from the point of view of several characters, but mostly the protagonist, "Maybe it's entirely human to be a little fucked up?" Oh, and by the way, a strong plot point throughout is loneliness, aging, and ultimately dying. And not necessarily in that order.
One little side note I want to make is the fact that the eponymous character reminded me very much of my third grade teacher Mrs. Powell. From the perspective of kids in our early 1970s class, including me, we thought she was mean and batshit crazy. She would drill our lessons into us by shouting at us every single day. She was unapologetic and unsympathetic to cry babies. She taught us the times tables the old fashioned way using the rote system, making us all chant out at the top of our lungs each level (or whatever you call it) of each multiplication over and over and over while she marched sternly, row after row, with her yardstick, slapping it loudly in her hand. And if she caught you not following along, or God forbid, goofing off -- Whack! You'd actually get smacked with it! It was in "those days." She's the teacher who taught us that the second month of the year was pronounced "Feb-ROO-ary" with the first "r" specifically pronounced hard and emphasized, not the more common pronunciation of "Feb-YOU-ary" (so common in fact, my speech to text software insisted on spelling it the correct way even though I'm pronouncing it without a hard "r" after the "b" so I had to correct it for you).
But I look back on Mrs. Powell now and I think, despite her harshness, she was doing it out of love. Love for us children, yes, but perhaps more importantly, love for the sacred duty that she felt she was tasked with in molding a generation of scholars that would know how to "do it right."
And that's Olive. Francis McDormand does an absolutely astounding job in capturing what might seem to unknowing audience members as a crotchety, bitter woman. But that's not the case. Olive is a loving woman. But above all, she loves to ensure that she has done her part in teaching those around her how to "do it right."