There’s a scandalous documentary to be made about Richard Harris, the Irish actor who was, during his colourful life, seldom invoked without the “hellraiser” label. The very term, indeed, for much of the 1970s — and beyond — seemed manufactured specifically for Harris and his sometimes drinking buddies Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed.
This is not a scandalous documentary, even if the bare bones of Harris’s biography are seldom dull. Harris was quite a character. A sometime IRA supporter who dated Princess Margaret. (He rescinded his support for the Provisionals after the 1983 Harrods bombing, a shift that is emblematic of his contradictory relations with the class system.) A coke-snorting carouser who larkishly shrugged off his addictions with the exclamation: “I drank because I loved it!” A promising Munster rugby player whose career was cut short by tuberculosis. An actor who prided himself on not playing by Hollywood’s rules but who also hired a photographer to document his own debauched tour of Europe. A wild, dangerous screen presence, who, before his death in 2002, became a family favourite as the twinkling Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films.
In addition to a wealth of archive footage, director Adrian Sibley has assembled a cavalcade of entertaining talking heads, many of whom can match Harris’s own gift of the gab.
Jimmy Webb, composer of MacArthur Park — the biggest hit of Harris’s improbable career as a pop star — explains how they fell out over a Rolls-Royce. Jim Sheridan recounts his valiant attempts to direct Harris on the set of The Field. Stephen Rea recalls fearing for his life during the making of Trojan Eddie.
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More movingly, the film follows Harris’s sons — director Damian Harris (The Wilde Wedding) and actors Jared Harris (Sherlock Holmes, Lincoln) and Jamie Harris (West Side Story) coming together to sift through their father’s possessions and revisit the suite that he kept at the Savoy Hotel.
Harris’s storied career as an actor receives a slightly lopsided presentation. We get Camelot and Harry Potter but not enough Red Desert or This Sporting Life, performances that cry out for a deep delve.
It’s not that kind of film. For all the interesting biographical details unpacked here, Harris remains a strangely elusive presence, as if he’s refusing to co-operate from beyond the grave.
