HBO's 'Olive Kitteridge' is TV rarity
“Olive Kitteridge’’ an HBO miniseries premiering at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday, is an exquisite rarity: a quiet, adult story.
Based on the best-seller, it stars Frances McDormand (“Fargo’’) as a brusque New Englander, a math teacher, wife and mother, who’s perpetually furious.
The movie begins with a shocking scene. “We meet her at a point in her life that anger is her most prominent motive,’’ McDormand says.
Her husband, Henry (Richard Jenkins, “Six Feet Under’’), adores her. He’s the town pharmacist. Where she is blunt to the point of rudeness, he is a friend to all he encounters.
It makes her want to throttle him, and she falls in love with another teacher, a dissolute drunk. Their affair is never consummated.
For four hours, we see Henry and Olive over 25 years in their quiet home by the sea as their one awkward son, Christopher (John Gallagher Jr., “The Newsroom’’) grows up and moves away.
Between the various shades of gray of the sky, Olive’s lack of warmth, Henry’s life could seem bleak. Yet that’s not what Jenkins sees.
“There were times when things didn’t go well,’’ Jenkins says. “It was a life. That is what it was. Though there was a lot of disappointment at the same time, I think Henry would be the last person ever to regret his life. I didn’t feel that shooting it. He had regrets. I felt really hopeful in the third episode. They thought about taking a trip and things quieted down. I sold the store and maybe we could travel. Something always came up and got in the way.’’
In her functional prim and dowdy clothes, Olive occasionally takes to a student who tries. In her own way, she is a good friend, though this is not a woman given to spontaneous hugs.
Over the years, the Kitteridges grow apart, back together; the ebb and flow of a long marriage. They have friends, each flirts with the possibility of an affair, and life, quiet and messy, happens.
“She is a rock,’’ McDormand says of Olive. “I will describe her like my husband described her: ‘She is an emotional Dirty Harry.’ It was really challenging for Lisa (Cholodenko, director) when she started editing the story, to work within the tropes of telling a female story. One of the problems is we are not used to female Dirty Harrys.’’
Bill Murray as Jack joins in the third hour, playing a quiet, pivotal role.
“An interior life is hard to translate cinematically,’’ McDormand says. “This is why four hours was necessary. We begin with them in middle age, and a crisis in their marriage, the most cathartic moment of Olive’s life.’’
