Disturbing yet enthralling

Charming and brutal

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I don't even know where to start. This show addresses the sadness and complication of the struggles regarding this scary horrible journey that we call 'life'. The story is about a bitter and sad woman (Olive Kitteridge). How she affects everyone around her and how life treats her. It also opens the eyes, to the dark un-addressed reality of mental health issues, suicide, their roots and the difficulty that they cause upon families. The casting, acting, directing, story, tempo is impeccable. I honestly have never seen anything like it. As someone who has dealt with severe mental health issues, had heard: "just get over it" from everyone, and struggled through the pain that it causes to myself and family members, I COULD NOT APPRECIATE THIS SHOW MORE.

Olive Kitteridge is a fable regarding original people in original situations. The subtlety with which Lisa Cholodenko carries the four-hour mini-series is what emphasizes the story about a woman who is childish yet cruel, sappy yet caring, wildly honest yet deeply depressed.I like Frances McDormand very much. Her cheekbones speak more than her mouth, and in here, the air she adopts of the titular character is splendid. She makes you wanna hate her and love her at the same time. Supported by the great Richard Jenkins and amusing Bill Murray, the story of the life of Mrs. Kitteridge is what we can relate to with our own lives. Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize winning novel gleams originality and its adaptation doesn't lag any behind.The four episodes each talk about certain periods of her life and it ends with a very good moral. The characters hold truth in them and we start becoming judgmental, without even knowing it. Themes such as bereavement, depression, and paranoia is rampant in the series and you will be stunned to find connections between them.The actors have been directed and shot well. The countryside locations serve as the perfect background for the story. I must say I am impressed by the whole cast and crew for giving me a piece of pie called Olive Kitteridge.BOTTOM LINE: Not many people know about this series, and it will be my duty to recommend it to people who love original dramas that are not just crime-related a la Fargo (2014) and True Detective (2014).Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES

Rather than an explicit film review, I'd like to lend some substantiation to the content of it. First, I knew little about the mini-series when I began watching but, I'll check out anything Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins are in. After 30 minutes or so I almost changed the channel because it was all too familiar…I had already lived a similar story….so it was going to be a tough movie for me. But, I stuck it out because I guess some part of me felt that I needed to see it. I'm glad I did.One of the very important aspects of the movie is the WAY Olive is portrayed. What I mean is that most people (incl many Doctors) remain significantly unaware of the spectrum of depression behavior. People think it only has to do with sadness, withdrawal, hopelessness, etc. But, it affects some people in mostly other ways and, therefore, is often unrealized.I come from a family of depressed people but most of them don't know they are. We are like Olive in that we're working, functioning people but who also have very little patience, irritability, varying degrees of paranoia and anger, an overall negative outlook and quick physical fatigue. Doesn't sound like the typical descriptions of clinical depression, does it? However, read those symptoms a second time and notice that they all do have a common thread…..a feeling of futility.My siblings and I grew up in such a competitive, negative household with only a random crumb of encouragement and plenty of verbal undercutting from every direction. There was no Henry (the buffer) in my house. Now in my 50's I understand that mental illness was the driver behind most of it. But, you know what folks? It's amazing how people adapt to their own mean-spirited, glass-half-empty attitudes and feel like it's normal (because for them and their family members, it is!). Whereas Olive had some understanding that she was depressed, she either didn't REALLY get it or thought that by sheer force of will she could manage it. She had adapted to it; it was her norm. I think that happens to lots of people. But, it is a really sad path because, like her adult son, I too have been helped *enormously* by medication. It has made all the difference and I feel so lucky to be alive in an era that these medicines are available! The symptoms I mention above in paragraph 4 are primarily gone in me now. It has been an absolute life-changer. Olive and many others never seek the help and that is SO tragic. As is the fact that people pull away when you have those difficult behaviors, like her son did. Depressed people are hard to reason with and are cloudy in general, that is why they need help. A clinically depressed person cannot WILL themselves out of it any more than someone can will away diabetes, thyroid disease, epilepsy, etc.The reviewer below, rich muller, didn't seem to watch the mini-series very closely. Of course some of them are miserable characters! They are struggling mightily with a physical problem; their brain is not balanced right. Mr. Muller would be cranky too, if he also had this issue, left untreated. This is a very relevant film for providing both a broader view of what clinical depression can look like and the varying life outcomes depending on choices made of how to handle the condition.

Excellent acting is marred by hateful characters and little character development. Every time there is an opportunity for warmth it is destroyed by the unremitting nastiness of one or more of the characters. If you want to watch a series that will convince you not to move to Maine, this is it. Bill Murray gets high billing, but except for a cameo, he appears only in the last episode. He too is inexcusably nasty, but that's the script's fault, not the actors. Generally the acting is fine. But if you hope to learn something about life from this, you will be disappointed. Your reaction will be to do your best to avoid anybody who behaves like the characters in this series. I watched it to the end to see how they could possibly resolve the unpleasantness of the story, but it never happened. Some writers had great fun putting together all the unpleasant verbal exchanges they could think of. Every time the interaction of the characters indicates that there is some hope, it is dashed by arbitrary nastiness. Whew! The only reason I didn't give it a 1 is the good acting. I think HBO must have been disappointed, and decided to put it out quickly, over 2 consecutive days. Critics seem to like it. Well, critics often like depressing stories; they mistake misery for subtlety.