All movies are like Rorschach tests to some degree — the old psychological technique where people see different things in inkblots depending on their own baggage, personality traits and neuroses. But some movies, like John Wells’ August: Osage County, seem especially suited for wildly different reactions based on the viewers’ own experiences. A lot of people have bemoaned the histrionics and theatricality of the characters, especially Meryl Streep’s Violet Weston, but to me Streep’s performance seemed nuanced, modulated and utterly realistic! (Do I need to call my therapist?)
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts (which also won five Tony Awards including Best Play), August: Osage County profiles various members of the Weston family whose lives 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 all-star cast, headed up by Meryl Streep as the domineering, drug-addled matriarch, includes Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson as the Weston daughters, Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper as Violet’s sister and brother-in-law, along with Ewan McGregor, Dermot Mulroney, Benedict Cumberbatch, Abigail Breslin, Misty Upham and Sam Shepard.
I don’t want to give away specific plot points for those of you who haven’t seen the play, but suffice it to say that the Westons have a roster of familial issues that could keep a team of shrinks busy for decades. When we first meet Streep’s Violet, her tendency toward judgment that borders on cruelty is exacerbated by her cancer diagnosis and an out-of-control addiction to prescription painkillers. Her husband, Beverly, poignantly (if briefly) played by Sam Shepard, is a once-famous poet and professor who has seemingly succumbed to the alcoholism that he struggled with his whole life. The beauty of seeing performers like Streep and Shepard in these roles is that we are able to see through their current handicaps and imagine what they were like when youth, health and beauty were on their side and they were still able to function in the real world.
The strength of Letts’ screen adaptation of his play is the way he provides enough of his characters’ current miseries to help us to fill in the gaps and somehow understand the disappointments and unattained goals that have led everyone to this moment in time. As Barbara, the oldest of the Weston girls, Julia Roberts has never given a more emotionally raw performance. She refrains from dipping into her bag of tricks — there is no trademark Roberts guffaw or other Julia-isms on display, but by shunning any attempt to be likeable, I found her Barbara to be deeply vulnerable and all the more appealing. Juliette Lewis is achingly poignant as younger sister Karen who can’t quite accept that she’s no longer the attractive gamine she once was, and Julianne Nicholson is similarly moving as Ivy, the one sister who stayed in Osage County and is now desperate to get the hell away from her suffocating life and to grab the brass ring that may finally bring her some happiness. All of the other characters have their moments in the sun. Most effective for me was the superb Margo Martindale as Mattie Fae, whose cruelty to her own son is the result of a dark secret in her past, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Little Charles. His character’s soft-spoken timidity is effectively played and a welcome change from the larger-than-life antagonists he’s played on film lately from Star Trek’s Khan to The Fifth Estate’s Julian Assange and The Hobbit’s Smaug.
While there are frequent moments of humor in the story, as there are in many serious dramas, I’m still aghast that Meryl Streep recently received a Golden Globe nomination for a Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy. Say what? If August: Osage County is a comedy, then Comedy Central might as well start having midnight showings of Schindler’s List. Not that the often-questionable Hollywood Foreign Press Association is alone in this assessment: the word “hilarious” is the second adjective used in the film’s own press notes released by The Weinstein Company. Maybe it’s that Rorschach thing again — I just can’t find anything that hilarious about something that close to my own family’s dysfunction! I was lucky enough to see Letts’ play twice on Broadway: first with the original Tony-winning Deanna Dunagan as Violet and then with the great Oscar-winning actress Estelle Parsons in the role. Is John Wells’ movie version of August: Osage County as powerful as the stage version? Not quite, but I’d still strongly recommend a visit with Meryl Streep and her severely damaged family members.