Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Rating: R
Director: John Wells
Quick Impressions:
Some people might find watching August: Osage County a disturbing experience, but for me it was reassuring. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been stressing out trying to decide whom I’d rather see win Best Supporting Actress, Jennifer Lawrence or Lupita Nyong’o. But now I know. Julia Roberts. Game over.
Leaving the theater, my husband said, “I think that’s the best performance by Julia Roberts I’ve ever seen,” and I agree (basically. I mean, I agree that it’s her most Oscary performance. Can you imagine anybody else in Pretty Woman, though? If it had been somebody else, no one would even remember that movie now. But iconic turns like that usually make people stars instead of winning them Oscars.)
I’ve always liked Julia Roberts. For as long as she’s been a star, I’ve heard people complain about her lack of versatility and limited range. I know what they mean, but I’ve always found that what she lacks in versatility, she more than makes up for in being Julia Roberts. I mean, lots of actors have range, but how many of them are Julia Roberts? I can only think of one.
I remember when Mona Lisa Smile came out, some people complained that it was basically just Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts dressed up in period clothing. My sister and I were like, “And that’s unappealing because…?” Who cares what she’s not. She is Julia Roberts, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s more than enough to get you through a feature length film.
What’s great about August: Osage County is that it features Julia Roberts in a hugely sympathetic role. Personally, I think if you have Julia Roberts in your movie, and you haven’t cast her in the most sympathetic role, you’re making a horrible mistake. (I’m not saying that Julia Roberts is incapable of playing a villain. My point is, if you don’t cast her as a likable, sympathetic character, you’re missing an opportunity for guaranteed success. It would be like getting Meryl Streep interested in your film, and then making her the dialect coach instead of the star. She could do it, I’m sure. She’s great with accents. But the point is, you’re an idiot.)
(By the way, Best Supporting Actress is the first category I’ll be posting in my annual Oscar write-up. So rest assured that despite my own anxieties, there’s really no need to worry. All five nominated women give Oscar worthy performances, so no matter what happens, it will all be okay.)
August: Osage County is the last Oscar-nominated film I have to see this year. (What I mean is, I’ve now seen everything nominated for picture, director, or acting.) Going in, I’d already heard a lot of things, most of them bad, that it was over-the-top, practically camp, that it was funny but hard to take seriously, that it was a disaster, that it featured great performances but didn’t work as a film, that it wasn’t as good as the stage play.
The last thing is probably true, but I can’t really comment because I haven’t read or seen the play. Given that Tracy Letts won a Pulitzer and the film isn’t quite Best Picture quality, I would guess that the stage play works better in terms of overall cohesion. (The performances in the film are uniformly excellent, however.)
Honestly, I wish I saw more stage plays, but I don’t. I have seen screenwriter Tracy Letts’s previous film Killer Joe (but again, not the play). I liked both films. Overall, Killer Joe was a bit better (more cohesive, more focused), but August: Osage County is hands down the one I’d rather watch again. Nobody in Killer Joe is truly sympathetic, but in August: Osage County, despite being flawed (to say the least), the characters are still strangely likable (even Violet Weston, though in her case, the better word might be pitiable, maybe even piteous—that seems more suited to a tragic stage character).
To those saying that the film seems unrealistic and over-the-top because nobody really acts like that in real life, I say, you know the wrong people. Trust me. People like the Westons do exist in real life. If nobody like that exists in your life, then count your blessings. Violet Weston is a nasty piece of work but that in itself doesn’t make her unrealistic. You watch her in amusement, thinking, Oh please! That’s like no one I know! I watch her in horror, praying, Oh please! Don’t let that be me!
There are a lot of crazy people in this world.
The Good:
Julia Roberts gives such an authentic performance in this film. I believed in her character one-hundred percent at all times. In fact, she reminded me overwhelmingly of someone I know (and I mean someone specific. I’m not alluding to a vague girl-next-door/every woman quality).
I haven’t been paying attention to Roberts for quite a while (not intentionally. She’s just been making fewer films, and I’ve been targeting likely Oscar nominees and summer blockbusters). I haven’t been skipping her movies deliberately, but for whatever reason, the last thing I saw her in at the theater was Charlie Wilson’s War.
I’ve always liked her, but I went into this movie assuming that she got the Oscar nomination mainly because she’s a big star who has been out of the spotlight for a while and is now appearing in a high profile film, playing an enormous, well written part. I never dreamed she would be so good. Within fifteen minutes, I’d forgotten to evaluate how well Roberts was handling the part because I was so captivated by the character. Instead of being showy, Roberts’s performance is so natural that it feels effortless, it feels real.
I liked her in Erin Brockovich, and I’m happy she won the Oscar, but this is her finest dramatic performance by such a wide margin that it’s like she never even made any other movies. It would be like if someone competing in the high jump and acquitting himself fairly well, suddenly on one try jumped seventy-five million feet into the air. I was genuinely surprised. I expected her to be good, but not this good. She’s phenomenal. If it were up to me, I’d give her the Oscar for this (and I’m a huge fan of the other four nominated performances. What a year!).
We keep hearing, too—over and over again from Violet, the vitriolic, drug addict matriarch—that when women get older they lose their looks. This definitely works to the advantage of Julia Roberts because after hearing all that so often, you really can’t help noticing that she’s absolutely gorgeous. You think, Don’t let your estranged husband’s criticism eat you up inside. You deserve better, flaws and all. You’re beautiful, and you’re a good person. I mean, yeah, Barbara’s a little bossy and emotionally guarded, but clearly she’s had to be. My husband and I agree, Barbara, you can come boss us around anytime.
And then, of course, there’s Meryl Streep. She always jumps seventy-five million feet into the air. Every time. If she were an Olympian, she wouldn’t be allowed to compete with the rest of the athletes from the nations of earth because she’s clearly out of this world. Even when Meryl Streep is not on her game, she’s so high up there above everyone else that it’s hard to critique her accurately. They need to make up a different award for her. All the other actors can have the Oscars, and she can have the Meryls where each year her performances are judged solely by comparison with her previous performances. The Academy now recognizes five to ten Best Picture nominees each year. They need to apply similar thinking to the Best Actress category, making a flexible six spots, five to be determined by popular vote, and one to be reserved for Meryl Streep if she’s made a movie that year.
Honestly watching Streep in this role made me think fondly of watching Katharine Hepburn in A Long Day’s Journey into Night and The Lion in Winter. When you have a performer of Streep’s caliber, a well written, character-driven stage play (full of grand, impassioned speeches and larger-than-life roles) is really the proper vehicle for showcasing that talent. I wonder if Streep compares herself to Katharine Hepburn. (What I mean is, I wonder if she says to herself, Katharine Hepburn won four Best Actress Oscars. I still have time to do that. I only need two more. Plus I have that bonus Supporting Actress Oscar. Streep doesn’t come across as very petty, but surely when you’re as lauded as she is, such thoughts must occasionally cross your mind.) The bottom line is, even if this movie were completely horrible, it would still showcase Streep, and she would still get a nomination, and people would still go see it for her sake. Look at The Iron Lady. That’s hardly a flawless film, and yet Streep still won the Oscar! I find myself wondering if as she gets older, Streep’s film choices will become increasingly unconventional and difficult to watch (apart from the element of her). I mean, she’s not going to play the rapping Grandma in The Wedding Singer. (And I mean no offense at all to the lovely and talented Ellen Albertini Dow.) I’m just saying that Streep needs challenging, complex, meaty roles, and for older women those can be hard to find in your typical Hollywood fare. We’ll see what happens.
I guess my point is, Meryl Streep as Violet Weston could just sit there at the dining room table (or on the porch swing, or in the back seat of the car) and talk for two hours, and that would be enough. It would be a weird movie, but she’d still get an Oscar nomination, and people would still go. She’s so talented, so good that her ability to pull off the performance alone justifies the film’s existence. I mean, did Tracy Letts’s acclaimed stage play really need to be a film? Well, yeah, because otherwise how could the movie going public have seen Meryl Streep play Violet Weston?
So now that I’ve seen the movie, I am very happy that both Streep and Roberts received Oscar nominations (though I wish there’d been a sixth slot in Actress for Emma Thompson).
The rest of the cast is really marvelous, too, particularly the women. (For whatever reason, I found most of the male characters frustrating, but I’ll explain what I mean in greater detail later in the review.)
Margo Martindale never seems to get the recognition she deserves. It’s great to see her in a substantial role worthy of her talents. She’s just as good as you’d expect her to be as Aunt Mattie Fae. She and Streep make surprisingly convincing sisters. (That’s actually a compliment I’d pay to the entire cast and the director. In spite of not really looking anything alike, these people do a wonderful job of totally convincing us that they’re close relatives.) I wish Mattie Fae’s storyline got a bit more time. (Maybe it does in the stage play. I don’t know.) We get this fantastic moment on the porch, this huge bombshell, and then the next thing you know, Martindale’s not even in the movie anymore. I love the bit with the whiskey, and the moment on the porch is intense. Basically, Martindale is great in every scene she’s in. I only wish she were in the movie more (though I understand why that might not be practical).
Juliette Lewis is another one whose performance stunned me with its excellence. Something about her has always rubbed me the wrong way. She’s a very good actress and has made some great films, but I sometimes feel like I just don’t get her. (It’s my fault as much as hers. Even when I was a kid watching Christmas Vacation for the first time, I remember thinking, This Audrey seems weird. Maybe it’s my fault, though. Maybe my gaze is weird, too.) Lewis is amazing in August: Osage County, however. In a less competitive year, she might have gotten a Supporting Actress nod herself. It’s the best work that I’ve ever seen her do. The way she delivers her final line to Julia Roberts just before exiting the bedroom is perfect. That moment impressed me and stuck with me. She has a lovely part in this, and she’s very, very good.
Abigail Breslin is perfectly cast, too, and she acquits herself very well. I wish we got to see more of Jean. Like Roberts, Breslin feels effortlessly authentic in the role. The character seems very real, recognizable. Watching, I thought, I’ve both known and been that person, or, you know, a variation of that person. I like Abigail Breslin and find her one of the least overrated child actresses around, so I look forward to seeing more of her work as she continues to mature.
I’m shamefully unfamiliar with Julianne Nicholson, but she’s great in this, too, playing Ivy, one of the more sympathetic (and pitiable) characters, perhaps the nicest person in the Weston family, in fact. Again (I’m saying this about practically everyone) I wish we’d seen more of her storyline, more detail. Her performance, however, is great. I thought it was so good without ever being showy that I wondered if she had played the role on stage or something (but turns out, she just does mainly TV, and I foolishly haven’t been paying attention to her.)
Among the men, Chris Cooper is the clear standout. For one thing, he actually has a huge speaking part (lots and lots of lines). For another, he delivers those lines extremely well. And (perhaps most importantly) he’s probably the nicest, kindest person in the entire family/movie. In a less competitive year, he could have been a realistic contender for Best Supporting Actor.
As far as the other men go, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ewan McGregor do nice work, too, but they’re basically wasted, and it’s a pity Sam Shepard can’t stick around longer (though obviously that’s unavoidable). Dermot Mulroney is good in his part but plays a real creep.
Besides a phenomenal cast (its greatest strength by far), the film also boasts a sharply written script (though I believe people when they say it’s not as good as the stage play because while the dialogue is insightful and exciting, the whole thing lacks a degree of cohesion). The tragic elements of the story sometimes feel clichéd or overdone, but the comedic moments are truly brilliant. August: Osage County is a very, very funny film, especially in its first half.
I was also impressed with the cinematography. There’s one fantastic shot early on when Violet is complaining to her daughter Ivy while sitting at her dressing table. Not only do we see Meryl Streeps’s face as she speaks, but we also see two alternate views of her face at all times in the dressing table mirror. It’s like Meryl Streep in stereo. I thought it was a nice, thoughtful touch.
Granted, the film isn’t trying to be Life of Pi or Gravity, but it still has a very strong visual sense of identity. Violet’s hot, dark, oppressive house, and the wide, desolate plains of Oklahoma are two visually distinct, readily identifiable spaces.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Meryl Streep):
Any one of Streep’s featured scenes in this movie would be enough to earn her an Oscar nomination by itself. I kept thinking, There’s her Oscar clip again and again so many times that I can’t even keep track of them all.
Probably the most heart-breaking (and unexpected scene) comes when she tells her daughters the story about the boots. At this point, Violet has already revealed the depth of her extreme nastiness to her family, the audience, and everyone. And yet it’s very hard to listen to her call to mind this childhood memory and not feel a stirring of pity for the poor woman. She’s an odious monster, but clearly it was an odious monster who made her that way.
Another high point of Streep’s performance is her long spell of “truth telling” at the funeral dinner.
Best Scene:
How can anyone ever forget a film where Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts fight? I don’t mean that they argue (though they certainly do). I mean in one scene Barbara tries to take something from her mother and basically tackles her, knocks her to the ground, and eventually has to be pulled off the top of her as both of them refuse to stop lashing out and struggling.
Is this the best scene in the movie? Maybe. What’s really great about it is the way it’s sandwiched between two equally powerful scenes. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, and it doesn’t feel like a cheap shock. Violet is certainly asking for it. In fact, just before it happens, she literally asks for it by daring someone to take away her drugs.
The way Roberts responds is just marvelous. It doesn’t seem showy or over-the-top to me. It seems incredibly real. Someone (pushed to her limits) finally snaps and falls back into an old pattern (cleaning up her mother’s mess and taking charge of the family).
The “truth telling” at dinner blends seamlessly into the fight between Barbara and Violet, and that segues naturally into Barbara’s impassioned crusade to find and destroy all the pills (and emotionally destroy the doctor).
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Julia Roberts):
Just as with Streep, the entire film is a sequence of Oscar worthy moments for Roberts. (Unlike Streep, her performance begins at its low point and gains intensity as it builds, so she is weaker at the beginning than the end. But that’s not a flaw in the performance. It’s the way the story is structured.)
I probably love her most when she’s tearing through the house on a quest to get rid of all the pills, but the late, showy scene where she starts screaming about fish is so full of energy and so unique to this movie that it will probably become iconic. (When the AFI next compiles its latest list of famous movie quotes, I expect some of Roberts’s lines from this scene to make the cut.)
I was ready to give the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Roberts long before we ever got to this scene, but with this amazingly energetic flourish, she definitely seals the deal, ending the performance on an unbelievably high note.
Best Action Sequence:
As I’ve said, the Streep Vs. Roberts brawl is great, and the part with the shovel is certainly unexpected. (I mean we’re fully expecting the stuff that brings about the use of the shovel, but the shoveling itself took me by surprise.)
What I love best, though, is the scene of a breathless Barbara chasing her desperate mother through the hayfield. That scene really resonated with me. For one thing, it’s slightly hilarious. For another, it seems like some sort of absurdist, existentialist statement on life. For another, they’re around all that straw, like they just can’t get away from “The Hollow Men.” And then, finally, Violet’s flight reminded me of 1) Someone I know 2) Something I’ve done. It felt very real and yet hyper-real all at once. I loved it.
Best Scene Visually:
Streep in the dressing table mirror is fabulous, as I said, as is the image of Roberts and Streep panting among the haystacks.
The Negatives:
This movie got under my skin from scene one when it opened with a meditation on the T.S. Eliot quote, “Life is very long.” When Beverly Weston pointed out that Eliot wrote down that common thought, and now we must attribute that quote to T.S. Eliot, I thought, “Really? That’s a very strange thing to say.” I mean, Eliot believes all writers from every time period are involved in an ongoing conversation, and in his works he freely quotes snatches of famous and not so famous literature, rarely pausing to give any attribution whatsoever. So I thought this was a strange idea to have about Eliot, and I realized that I would like to read the stage play in its entirety.
In case we didn’t get the idea from “life is very long,” Weston also tells us, “Here we go round the prickly pear,” so we know he’s talking about Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men.” I truly love the way the movie seems to be having a conversation with the poem, and pointedly ends “not with a bang but a whimper.” However when I got home I did a quick bit of research trying to discover what exactly Letts left out of his stage play when he adapted it to the screen, and I discovered that the play ends with Johnna saying, “This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends.”
Why on earth does the movie leave that out? I’m very confused about that. Since she’s the one given the book and quoted at in the beginning, it would be nice to learn that she’s taken what Bev has told her to heart.
What is the purpose of Johnna, anyway (other than to let us know that racism is among Violet’s innumerable faults)? She doesn’t feel like a real person. She feels like a device, only she’s not a very necessary device. I would guess that she does more useful work (for the audience, I mean, literary work) in the stage play.
Johnna is so underdeveloped it’s ridiculous. Misty Upham does the best she can, but she has nothing to work with.
And Johnna’s not the only character who needs some fleshing out. For a film that is entirely character driven (I mean, the whole plot is just an excuse to throw together a bunch of colorful characters), August: Osage County features a shocking number of underdeveloped characters.
Barbara’s estranged husband is the worst. Ewan Macgregor does everything he can, but the character is just not interesting. Maybe it has to be that way. I understand that he’s there to reveal something crucial about Julia Roberts’s character, but must he have so little to offer us himself? Like Johnna, he feels more like a plot device than a person.
And Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, Little Charles, is so incredibly frustrating. In spite of everything, Cumberbatch actually manages to give an astonishingly strong performance. He has nothing at all to work with. Everything we know about Little Charles is filtered through other characters. We never get to see him show for himself what kind of person he is. (The little song is a step in the right direction, but that gets broken up too fast.) As a result, there’s a fairly major subplot in this story that we’re really not given enough information to respond to adequately.
Ivy’s situation makes me want to scream. She herself is given a fair amount of screen time, but her relationship is not. We have no idea if she’s in a good relationship or not. We just don’t know. I will say, though, that I find the dilemma that she suddenly faces cliché and almost insulting. We can see it coming from a mile away, but we think, No, surely not! That is the one thing in the film that feels like a cheap trick. It’s like a cliché of the tragic family stage play, taken straight out of Sophocles. Personally, I don’t see why it’s such a problem at all, given what Ivy has already revealed about herself. (I mean, if you’re coming from Ivy’s background, it’s not such a problem, regardless, but what she’s told us lets us know that the biggest practical problem is a non-issue.) On the way home, I told my husband emphatically (and pretty crudely, I suppose) in the car that when you’re almost twenty, you probably shouldn’t do thing x, but when you’re almost fifty, you should just go ahead and do thing x. He replied, “Hmm, well, that’s good to know for the future. I guess I’m glad it’s just you and your sister, then.” (That will actually make sense if you’ve seen the movie.) Seriously, why is this a big deal? Ivy wants to put thousands of miles between herself and most of the rest of her family, anyway.
I feel like August: Osage County is a great if you’re fascinated by Barbara and Vi. It is not, however, a very cohesive, satisfying look at the rest of the family. The other characters have to be there to flesh out the world of the mother and daughter, but the fact that the others aren’t getting adequate development is distracting and disappointing. We learn just enough about them to make it impossible to keep them at arm’s length. Though I have not seen the stage play, my guess would be that it gives more time to some of these much too abbreviated subplots.
As a comedy, the movie totally succeeds. It is extremely hilarious and offers up some fresh and unexpected situations for our entertainment. The trouble is, it stops feeling like a comedy about half way through. Even though there are funny moments right up through the fish scene, it ultimately ends on a disquieting note of tragedy. And—to me at least—elements of the tragedy feel too contrived. The humor in the film is fresh and exciting, but the major dramatic complications feel stale, predictable, clichéd, and ultimately not quite satisfying.
Overall:
August: Osage County is not without its flaws, but it’s immensely entertaining (if not ultimately satisfying), insightful, funny, and incomparably well-acted. Meryl Streep, of course, is a particular standout and could potentially win her fourth Oscar for her delightful turn as the hideous-yet-piteous drug addict matriarch, Violet Weston. (It seems far more likely that Cate Blanchett will win Best Actress this year, but it’s a long time until March 2, and Streep is always a contender.)
For me, the real surprise of the movie is the strength of Julia Roberts’s excellent performance as Violet’s oldest daughter Barbara. If it were up to me, Roberts would win Best Supporting Actress this year. She’s that good. It’s the best work I’ve ever seen her do. Granted some people could complain that she’s really the lead actress who campaigned as supporting. But I think to a degree, you’re always the one doing the supporting if you’re acting opposite Meryl Streep who at this stage of her career is clearly the uncontested star of every movie she touches.
If you follow the Oscars, you have to go see August: Osage County. If you don’t follow the Oscars, you still have to go see August: Osage County. I mean, come on, do you really want to miss a movie where Julia Roberts beats up Meryl Streep? I mean, she tackles her and wrestles her to the floor, screaming profanity at her all the while. How often do you get a chance to see something like that up on the big screen? You know you want to see it. Admit it.