“August: Osage County” is a film swamped in melodrama: a darkly comic domestic drama set somewhere hot and sweaty outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma, it centres on the reunion of the most dysfunctional family in our known universe — these people make the Griffins from “Family Guy” look like the Brady Bunch. Of course, melodrama is to be expected from Tracy Letts, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play the film is adapted from: William Friedkin’s film adaptations of Letts’ previous plays “Bug” and “Killer Joe” did after all feature Michael Shannon pulling out his own teeth with a pair of pliers and Emile Hirsch having his skull caved in with a can of pumpkin puree.
There’s nothing quite so violent here, but in amongst the ferocious screaming matches and smashed dinner plates you get the sense that we’re not far from it. The estranged Weston family — among them Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor and Juliette Lewis — are reunited by crisis when patriarch Beverly (Sam Shepard) suddenly disappears without a trace. At the rural Weston country house the whole family comes together to support Beverly’s wife, the loopy, depressant-addicted Violet (Streep). As the Westons bicker and tussle it’s not long before there’s some harsh “truth tellin’” around the dinner table and dark, long-buried secrets finally come to the surface.
As the drugged-up, sharp-tongued matriarch of the family, Streep obliterates all that surrounds her, including her ensemble of co-stars — bewigged, unhinged and sporting the darkest of sunglasses, she’s like Bob Dylan in drag as played by Nicolas Cage. The only one who walks away unscathed from Streep’s piercing glares and maniacal cackles is Julia Roberts, and that’s purely through wrestling Streep to the ground to snatch her pills away. Others try — Benedict Cumberbatch gives it a good go as the cripplingly shy screw-up of the family — but it’s a losing battle; this is Streep’s show, and there’s just no topping her.
As I said before, “August: Osage County” is swamped in melodrama, with big, loud, sometimes shrieking performances and prickly one-liners howled with pointed fingers. This leads me to believe that it might’ve worked better on-stage. This is not to say that it’s a bad movie — its performances and dialogue are too enjoyable for that — but all this yelling is exhausting and there’s something rather stage-bound about it; watching it I couldn’t help but feel that its true home is not on the cinema screen but on broadway. Though I enjoyed it, mostly for Streep and her drug-infused madness, I frankly struggled to picture it winning the Pulitzer for Drama — I assume the reason is much more evident in the original stage production.
Rating: 6/10
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