AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

What pushes us to endure the world? Even those of us who lead truly blessed lives do not do so without a certain degree of resistance. So if we all have obstacles – and for many of us those obstacles are particularly brutal – what prods us to continue? Why don’t more of us decide to call it a day sooner, and check out?

Perhaps it’s this: those obstacles so many of us deal with? Usually they aren’t obstacles – they’re people. So while giving up and shuffling off this mortal coil might put an end to the obstacle, it would also tell that person that they have won the fight…

…and sometimes we’re just too damned stubborn to let anyone else win a fight. Especially if that person is family.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY introduces us to Beverly and Violet Weston (Sam Shepard and Meryl Streep). Married for many years, The Westons have reached an understanding: Beverly will drink, Violet will pop pills. Neither one will bother the other about their substance abuse, allowing both of them to carry on ‘carrying on’.

One day though, after hiring a Native American caretaker to look after Violet, Beverly disappears. He walks without a trace, leaving Violet alone and confused. In a panic, she does what any of us would do – she calls her family, most of whom have moved far away from Osage County, Oklahoma.

Beverly’s disappearance summons daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts) back home. Alongside Barbara comes her daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin) and her husband Bill (Ewan McGregor). Barbara and Bill are going through a divorce, which is just “one more thing” in the midst of all this drama. After Barbara, there’s Karen (Juliette Lewis) and her fiancé Steve. They’re the ones in the Ferrari. Then there’s Ivy Weston (Julianne Nicholson), the daughter who has stayed closest to home, but still has plenty of baggage.

Finally, there’s Violet’s sister Mattie Fae and brother-in-law Charles (Margot Martindale and Chris Cooper). They bring Violet’s nephew “Little” Charles along with them (Benedict Cumberbatch), a young man who seems to be the black sheep of the family for no other reason than the fact that every family needs one.

Almost as if fate was waiting for the entire family to reconvene, news arrives that Beverly has turned up dead – drowned in the river. With that The Westons begin to grieve, for the man they loved…and perhaps for the very family itself.

I’ve long believed that the family unit is one of life’s greatest contradictions. The idea is that our families are the people we are closest to – our common blood creating a bond stronger than any other. Often this bond does provide us with support, understanding, shelter, and love. Memories are created through this bond that become touchstones  and teach us life lessons. Where the contradiction comes in is the way our family can sometimes be the people who hurt us most of all. The support becomes burdensome. The understanding becomes an excuse. The shelter is absent when it’s needed most. The love is abused and breeds contempt.

In short, the people we are supposed to be closest to are the ones that drive us craziest…and the ones that hurt us the most.

FIlm has seldom seen a better embodiment of this than Meryl Streep’s performance as Violet Weston. A bit of acting that the gifted woman truly loses herself in, Violet is a woman who is bitter, confused, abusive, and deeply damaged. Were it any other person, one might be willing to chalk the hell Violet unleashes upon her gathered family up to shock. After all, her husband has just gone and drowned himself rather than spend one more day in her company. However, there’s something too perfect about the cruelty Violet unleashes; too rehearsed. She is able to cut her family members down far too easily for this to be grief run amok. No, this is cruelty disguised as criticism, and it allows us to see a nasty side of Streep we’ve seldom been witness to.

It almost isn’t fair to put anyone into a scene opposite Streep when she’s this on-point, but amazingly Julia Roberts is up for the task. With the family scattered, it seems as though there are seldom moments where Barbara has to be daughter, sister, wife and mother all at once. However, that’s just what the death of her father forces her to be – and she does it well. Now and then, the dysfunction of The Westons causes Barbara to take a few lumps, but time and again she takes control. Streep’s words and deeds seem to eviscerate everybody else, but Roberts is able to outlast them all – and what’s more, we believe that she would.

The great thing about adapting an amazing play like this Tracy Letts opus is that we get so much mileage from talented actors merely “sitting around and talking”. Director John Wells almost gets away with turning on the camera and letting the madness unfold. However, what might have set this film a bit more apart from its source material is a little bit of a deft cinematic touch. We get a glimpse of it when Beverly’s body is being prepared for burial. It’s a moment that brings elegance and subtle melancholy, however it’s completely absent from the rest of the film. Pity too, since a little bit more would have made this adaptation something truly special.

When we get to the end of AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, one can almost see the puddles of blood on the floor. We have watched a family virtually destroy each other one-at-a-time. The clouds have been gathering for years, but now the storm has finally arrived, and it’s torn the landscape of this family to pieces. The movie might begin with a death in the family, and makes us bear witness to the death of a family.

Matineescore: ★ ★ ★ out of ★ ★ ★ ★

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