Mrs. Harris

Despite two strong lead actors in Ben Kingsley and Annette Benning, Mrs Harris flops. The tone of the script is the problem. It should combust at the end after a slow, almost unbearable build-up of tension. The audience should FEEL Jean Harris' rage, frustration, and hopelessness. Instead, we're supposed to laugh. The script is written as farce, not drama. Good drama can contain cynical humour and pathos, as long as it's not dominated by either one. Then it's not drama. I'm sure Hollywood bigwigs said to the poor scriptwriter, "no one wants to watch a tragic love-story between two fiftyish neurotics, even if the broad murders the guy in the end." Of course, the producers would be too young to remember the case itself. So, they took the easy route and made the autumn romance a farce. They sporadically threw in some booty, and the murder as teasers to make the movie bearable to watch.

Yup, they missed the boat with this one.

For anyone who remembers the shooting of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor at the hands of the school mistress from Madeira, the fancy girl's school in Potomac, MD, this film is a soap opera scandal which should have been allowed to rest in yellowing newspaper clippings (though those are probably on line now in incorruptible digits). Annette Bening is Mrs. Harris, the abandoned and lovelorn teacher. Bening is a fine actress and while she succeeds in bringing her character to life, all that is accomplished is to demonstrate once again that Mrs. Harris was pathetic. Kingsley has much less to work with and all he is able to demonstrate is that Herman (Hy) Tarnower was an unmitigated son-of-a-bitch, which we already knew. Why did Ellen Burstyn and Cloris Leachman allow themselves to be roped into this? One assumes for the money, certainly not the art. Could this have been a better picture? Given the facts of the case, which are reproduced more or less as they were presented at the time, I would guess not. Neither of the principals has much of a back story to be unpacked and, while the details of the murder made headlines for days at the time, at the end of the day it's merely a sad, sordid, essentially uninvolving tale.

I always wanted to know the details of the Jean Harris murder story. However, because I kept to scholarly reading, I didn't want to take the time or money to buy the books & magazines about her circumstances.

Now that I've seen the show, I have a greater understanding of the background history & consequential events that led to Harris's trial & conviction.

My knowledge grew because I witnessed riveting performances by a host of veteran actors: ones that I have grown to trust NOT to be involved in shameless mockeries of the truth, like the "Path to 9/11" is. I'm more curious to go back & read the books, newspapers & magazines about "Mrs. Harris."

My husband and I sat through 20 films this year and this one, along with Michael Haneke's "Cache," was by a long way the best and the most surprising we saw. You go to a gala at a film festival and you're prepared for mostly safe stuff chock full of movie stars, so many of them, like curios in cabinets ("Walk the Line" and "North Country" are two such examples; there are others), that you lapse into a deep sleep just looking at the credits, knowing the exercises in taste and decorum that will follow. I wasn't encouraged by the cast list of "Mrs. Harris" but was really interested in the whole Jean Harris story so along we went to the screening.

For those of you who are not familiar with the tale, this is the murder of the Scarsdale Diet doctor saga in 1980. Jean Harris was an uptight headmistress who, so the media spun it at the time, in a fit of jealous rage drove from Virginia to New York in a blinding rainstorm and pumped the doctor full of bullets because he wanted to marry another woman.

What seems like a pretty straightforward narrative turns out to be anything but that, principally because of the way the story is told in this version and the incredible performances, not just from Annette Bening, though I have never seen such subtlety from this actress but also from Ben Kingsley, Cloris Leachman, Frances Fisher, Mary McDonnell and a host of others in truly perfectly judged cameos.

The first-time writer and director of "Mrs. Harris" never judges the characters and thus wisely puts the responsibility for making any judgments solely in the laps of the audience. The tonal shifts in this film are dizzying but never confusing and perhaps the most brilliant thing about it is the way in which you're seduced into laughing at or with all the insanity and then immediately are shown something that makes you question why you laughed in the first place.

It's not an easy ride or the most comfortable of films to watch, but it's one of the finest depictions of obsession, dependency and love gone wrong I've seen in a long time. It's not for everyone. My husband, who also loved it, had a heated debate with another couple we saw it with who hated it and mostly hated it because of the way it refuses to score easy victim versus villain points. It's divisive and from time to time you wonder about certain shots or the juxtaposition of certain scenes but these are minor quibbles. This is a debut feature that outclasses most of what I've seen in multiplexes this whole year. Go if you want to think and feel as a result of that thinking.

I heard a rumor that the film is not going to be released in movie theaters but will air on HBO. That, if true, is a pity because it's something that should be seen and the performances, writing and direction are first rate.

MRS. HARRIS is an HBO dud movie, and that is primarily because of the content of the story, the writing, the direction, and the waste of some fine actors' time. Based on a book by Shana Alexander adapted for the screen and directed by Phyllis Nagy, the story relates in fractured pieces between a murder scene, a trial and flashbacks the pathetic story of the death of Dr. Herman Tarnower (a wasted Ben Kingsley) the Scarsdale Diet author/doctor/womanizer at the hands of Mrs. Jean Harris (Annette Bening) a upwardly climbing school marm who becomes Tarnower's live in lover and addicted to his prescribed drugs. Her life is plagued by Tarnower's inability to keep his apparent elephantine genitals (this is made clear in an extended ridiculously inane segment in a locker room!) in his pants and eventually her own shaky self perception leads her to a suicide attempt that results in Tarnower's murder. The story is based on fact so there is no giving away an ending.

The only reason to watch this bit of tripe is Annette Bening who is such a gifted actress that she can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear - and this screenplay is definitely the latter. A surprising squandering of money is obvious in the casting of bit parts to fine actors such as Cloris Leachman, Brett Butler, Ellen Burstyn, Mary McDonnell, Phillip Baker Hall, Chloë Sevigny, etc. Many have only one line! Otherwise this is a one of those films that relies on media blitz spectacle posing as a worthy story to create a movie. A must miss - except for Bening. Grady Harp, February 06