Actors aren’t always as interesting as their performances. Whatever you think of Olympia Dukakis, she is not so splendid a raconteur that she can carry “Olympia,” a feature-length profile directed with grating obsequiousness by Harry Mavromichalis.
The heart of the documentary consists of Dukakis (an Oscar winner for “Moonstruck”) holding forth on her life and career, often with her husband, the actor Louis Zorich, who died in 2018. Her many admirers and collaborators offer praise, generally in vague, grandiose terms. (“Olympia probably invented the feminist movement,” says Rocco Sisto, a former student of hers, explaining some of her acting preferences.) The film presents Dukakis, now 89, as a self-made star who founded a theater company in Montclair, N.J., to play the parts she wanted and to counter the drama world’s bias against her Greek-American background.
It’s disappointing that we have to settle mainly for still photographs of her best stage work, especially after hearing it described so effusively. Of a Dukakis performance in “Mother Courage,” the actress Lynn Cohen says she felt that theater would never “get any better than this.”
At times, Mavromichalis himself seems starstuck, to the extent that he can’t distinguish the disarming from the banal. If Siri doesn’t understand you, take heart: Even a masterful elocutionist like Dukakis baffles her iPhone. And when a shopper recognizes Dukakis in a Cyprus grocery store, Dukakis asks her, “Can you tell me where the bottled green tea might be?” There is some moving footage toward the end, though, of Dukakis discussing her family lineage with residents of her ancestral hometown in Greece.
Olympia
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.
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