2014, USA, 240 min. (four hour-long episodes)
Prickly and curt, lifelong Mainer Olive Kitteridge (Frances McDormand) revels in control. She maintains the upper hand in her marriage to kindly Henry (Richard Jenkins), the beloved town pharmacist, and their sensitive son, Christopher (John Gallagher Jr.). Olive exists in a disgruntled, self-satisfied equilibrium, but over 25 years, crises force emotions to surface. Henry’s endless patience and health wobble; Christopher grows up and cannot comprehend his mother’s indifference toward his churning turmoil. The world Olive spent her life cultivating is eroding. Can she regain her footing? Working from Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 novel, director Lisa Cholodenko has crafted a gut-punch to our souls. One woman’s inability to compromise forces everyone in her orbit to recalibrate their lives. Olive Kitteridge feels both grand and intimate, painful and joyous, because we can all relate to what unfolds.
