After watching Errol Morris's Wormwood, Joanna Harcourt-Smith - author of an autobiography, Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story, and Timothy Leary's girlfriend (perhaps "common law wife" would be equally apposite) during the period 1972-77 - got in touch with Morris because she had been wondered, had wondered: had she- a young and naive rich girl - been manipulated into Leary's life somehow?
Initially, it was to be told in the style of Wormwood - not just interviews with Harcourt-Smith and archive footage, but re-enactments, too - until the pandemic came along. So it got completed as a documentary in Morris's usual style.
Watching it, however, this question of the CIA becomes a backdrop, a thin framework upon which to hang the real point of the film, which is that Harcourt-Smith is a fun, charming, and very engaging raconteur overflowing with stories, most of them amusing, some of them legitimately dark and traumatic. Of course, one is sometimes left wondering just how embellished these stories are, but you could argue that this is a virtue because it engages the viewer more.
That Harcourt-Smith is so compelling a subject is one of three reasons to watch. The second is that if you're interested in this particular snippet of history, she has a different and unique perspective, offering a "sideways" view at it. The third is that Morris and his graphics crew do some great things with visuals - overlaying colors, blotter-like imagery, text in a variety of fonts and colors (when Harcourt-Smith talks about going on TV in Turkey, overlaid on the archive footage is, in parentheticals, 'Not Joanna'), every archive image in motion, being stretched this way and that.
(Before continuing, a note: Joanna Harcourt-Smith passed away in October 11, 2020, a little more than a month before the documentary's debut on Showtime in November.)
Harcourt-Smith really is the primary reason to watch this, though - totally engaging while you're watching. But afterward, or perhaps even during, you will probably notice that there are perhaps too many stories, and this - combined with skipping along the timeline that, if you have no familiarity with the history (hi, I'm Terry, and I didn't do any research before watching), or maybe even if you do, you'll lose track of when, exactly, it is that's being spoken of - makes the film feel bitty. For example, early in the film Harcourt-Smith mentions being pregnant, and it's not until the last third or quarter that this is returned to, and so the film never quite seems to cohere.
Paul Leonard-Morgan's music, too, doesn't quite hit the heights that Philip Glass's minimalist intensity leant to The Fog of War or Danny Elfman's marriage of Glass-esque minimalism with his own 'dark fairytale' style leant to The Unknown Known - or even Leonard-Morgan's orchestra-plus-synths-and-cello-solo score for Wormwood. Having scored four Morris films, perhaps it's time for Morris to once again switch composer - maybe give Ian Honeyman a try. (Yours truly is also available.)
All in all, it's a solid and entertaining documentary, well worth watching if the relationship between Leary and Harcourt-Smith fascinates you or if you're an Errol Morris fan. But it's not his best work.
I watched My Psychedelic Love Story twice before writing this review: once solo, and once with a friend; on the 8th and the 21st of August respectively.
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