Untimely review/Oscar Preview: August Osage County

This is some hardcore Tennessee Williams shit.

Photo from TheHollywoodReporter.com

When an Oklahoma family patriarch goes missing, the whole Weston clan comes together to support their ailing - but still abusive - mother, Violet (Meryl Streep).  Chaos and emotional upheaval ensures, as one would expect from such altertenatingly strong-willed and martyr-bound individuals.  But rather than everyone learning and growing, no one learns and no one grows.  It all stays horribly, dysfunctionally the same.  Victims are victimized and villains are villainous.  And to top it off, new villains and victims are introduced as this family grows.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but is awfully entertaining to watch.  

August Osage county is adapted by the play of the same name by Tracy Letts.  And it feels like a play.  It is a scene-based film and totally dependent on dialogue.  And the actors lean towards melodrama, each with their own drippy drawl.  

The unchangeableness of the characters is very strange perch for a film to rest upon, if not a play.  It results in many characters remaining unlikable - even though you kind of love them.  I don’t believe the film is trying to deliver a cynical message about family.   But there is a coldness, a distance that the warm embrace of film never quite traverses.

These are big characters and most are played remarkably well.  So the act of not-liking them is active and conflicting.  But just as the viewer starts to feel something like sympathy for one of them, it is violently ripped away.  The act is sometimes funny, sometimes devastating and often very visceral.  

Photo from www.napavalleyfilmfest.org

Both Streep and Julia Roberts, who plays Barbara, the favorite of the three Weston girls and most like her mother, have been nominated for Academy Awards.  Streep was very Streepsian - a word that has been flitting about a lot lately.  It gets pretty ugly at points.  A fearless performance in the vein of Bette Davis.  Roberts roughs it (and roughs it up) a bit too.  There is no awkward sweetness and optimism here.  (I can’t think of a good adjective reworking “Roberts”.)

When it was all over, with very little resolved, we all just go home.  I was left nothing but my enjoyment of the film.   I overheard a few audience members complain.  I think it is simply the unexpected lack of cathartic change and resolution.  And then there is the one plot twist towards the end that is completely shocking and, perhaps, off putting.  (I thought it was great.)  So you have that to look forward to.  

Some other things:

• Dermot Mulroney has perfected his role as Jerkface Dirtbag.  
• Poor, poor Ivy.  Julian Nicholson plays Violet’s shrinking violet but dependable daughter.   She will break your heart and fittingly gets a bit lost amongst all the high wattage star power.  
• There was a gleeful gasp heard from the audience members who were unprepared for a Benedict Cumberbatch sighting.  (It might have been me.)* My main takeaway from his role was that I didn't realize how youthful and accessible he could be.  In Sherlock he seems so old and far away - one forgets its simply acting.

So go see it.  Just don’t expect it to make you want to call home.  

* Same thing happened when I saw Twelve Years A Slave - although within that context it seemed highly inappropriate.