August: Osage County

Posted on: 7th March 2014  |

Director: John Wells

Starring: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin

Certificate: 15 (121 mins)

UK release date: 24 January 2014

 

August: Osage County is a small, independent film seeped in self-obsessed Southern US cynicism. Yes, it has amassed a very impressive cast list, from Julia Roberts to Meryl Streep via Chris Cooper, with a healthy splash of British character acting in the guise of Benedict Cumberbatch and Ewan McGregor.  Sure, it boasts George Clooney as a producer. But don’t be fooled; this is a film dripping in dour, despairing melodrama. After all, its tagline is ‘misery loves family’.

Officially, the film pertains to be ‘a look at the lives of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose paths have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Oklahoma house they grew up in, and to the dysfunctional woman who raised them’. The strong-willed sisters are Barbara (Julia Roberts), Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) and Karen (Juliette Lewis). Their overpowering mother, the pill-addicted Violet, is played by the always-excellent Meryl Streep. There are various other relatives and hangers-on, each brought to life by a well-known, likely award-nominated character actor.

And yet, there is no soul or liberation in this piece. Each character creeks under the weight of their own self-importance, speaking only so they can be heard or in order to launch a foul-mouthed tirade towards their relatives. Moments of supposed light relief are actually as flat, dusty and dry as the desert planes that surround the family house.

August: Osage County contains plenty of scope for scenery-chewing, emotional breakdowns and big family secrets ultimately unravelling. It is very much the type of story that actors tend to love. There is no surprise, then, in discovering that the script was adapted from his own play by Tracy Letts, himself an actor.

There is no getting away from the fact that this just feels like a filmed play. The story may well entice a theatre audience who can feel the energy from a live enactment, but the same story on film lacks dynamism. Director John Wells, with just his second feature film effort, never seems to take a true hold of the freedom that film can give. Rather he just sets the cameras to record and then lets his cast gleefully swear their way through a two-hour-long misery fest.

The family are all brought back together when the patriarch suddenly goes missing. Each of the sisters gets the call, and they gather around the irascible and highly combustible Violet. As strong-willed a woman as there could be, Violet is overbearing and unafraid to speak her mind. The more time the family spend together, the more the cracks appear in the thin veneer of each of the characters’ lives.

There is one major set-piece when everyone is sat around the table for a family meal. Considering that there are so many independent character actors of considerable pedigree at the ready, this scene feels overlong and lacks dramatic credibility. It may well have read amazingly in rehearsal, with each actor delivering with gusto, but on film there is not an inch of redemption during this scene. We watch passively as heated words are exchanged and then, in the denouement, a small scuffle breaks out. Nothing feels resolved or intriguing, and there is no sanctity to be found. Streep owns this scene much like she has in many of her recent roles, and there is at least something to be taken from her broken portrayal of the spiralling Violet. Roberts, Oscar-nominated for her role (as was Streep), swears more than in the rest of her roles combined.

Everybody hates everybody else, and anything of beauty or truth is trampled on, discarded as a mere inconvenience. This is self-satisfied cynicism at its haunting worst. By the time that the closing credits begin to roll, the viewer is left with a bad taste in the mouth and the fervent hope that their own family will never end up like this. 

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Reviewer: John Quinn

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