On the Screen

Published 6:42 pm Tuesday, January 28, 2014

August: Osage County

Rated R for language including sexual references, and for drug material

 

And you think your family is dysfunctional? So you opine that a gathering of your kin causes psychological trauma? After a family conclave are your emotions as twisted and contorted as a box of cables stored in the top closet shelf? Well, you are a dilettante, an amateur, a mere novice when compared to the Olympic gold medal winning family depicted in August: Osage County.

It was born a play and as a play, it makes a mass crucifixion look like a quilting bee. It makes Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf feel like a Kumbaya sing at an Episcopal Retreat with a case of wine passed around under the guise of Communion.  As a movie, none of the misery, humiliation, and pain is mislaid; it is all there on film except for the extra feel-better scene which was tacked on to pander to the peasant masses who can’t stomach the darkness of domestic strife and dismal, numbing, hopeless heart grief which life can be and is for so many. (It was unnecessary.)

It takes place in the heat-bowl of the plains, a dusty and hot zone of Oklahoma where the air boils with hopelessness. The patriarch of a family (masterfully and morosely played by Sam Shepard) hires a Native American (or “Injun”) woman (stoically and heroically played by Misty Upham) to take care of his cancer-ridden, chain-smoking, drug-addicted wife (Meryl Streep doing, as usual a bravura performance). He is a full blown, brooding, alcoholic poet and literature professor. While explaining to the caretaker her duties, he shares a line from T. S. Elliot, which is the theme of the entire play/movie, a prologue if you will. Then he disappears. The matriarch’s big sister (Margo Martindale hauntingly playing one of my aunts: demonstrative with bountiful greetings and generous of maternal bosom snuggling but without the full can-a-day hairspray habit) calls in the three daughters (Julia Roberts showing her mature acting chops, Julianne Nicholson playing the put-upon, plain-Jane sister, and Juliette Lewis playing the trampy, lost-soul sister who can’t be a woman without a man, however worthless he may be).  We meet the men in the daughters’ lives: there is Julia Roberts’ character’s husband (Ewan McGregor playing a jerk who masquerades as a good and straight-up guy—which he is not) and Juliette’s latest (a real cad—the kind of guy you would like to run over with his sports car after you steal it). We also meet the big sister’s husband played by Chris Cooper who, in one scene, demonstrates what human decency is all about and while doing so will make the screen wobble a bit by his intense, smoldering compassion. And let me not forget their rather simple-minded sweet-soul son, emotionally tortured by his mother. The son is played, according to the credits, by Benedict Cumberbatch but I think it is somebody who looks like Benedict Cumberbatch because what is on the screen is someone I have never seen. Either that or Mr. Cumberbatch is about as versatile as any actor I have ever seen. Note to Leonard DiCaprio: study the range of Mr. Cumberbatch. It is called “acting.”

They all converge for the funeral. There are two mortification processes after the death: the departed and the family left behind. And it is not a pretty sight, I can assure you.

They assemble at the homeplace, a ramshackle house—a visual metaphor of the family, slap dash add-ons, paint peeling and porches sagging, once-glorious but now sad and dilapidated. And when they come together, the bitterness and resentment are served at the familial table along with the ubiquitous casseroles.

The strength of this play/film is the cast. Each actor spins up character masterpieces. The dialog is heart wrenching but rings true; perhaps we have had snippets of the same angry words and retorts in our own households but hopefully not all at once nor as bodacious and tragic. Perhaps feelings go unexpressed in many families but, still, the family secrets and skeletons rattle nevertheless.  

This is a Greek tragedy but it takes place in Oklahoma. It is sad. It is depressing. There is a little bit of singing but take no solace: this film will snatch you out of your cushy little seat, wring you out, and throw you in the direction of some comfort food restaurant or, like Ms. Streep’s character, to the pharmacy. There is no familial love and lightness in this tale. It is what is called a tragedy. If you seek escapism, stay far away. However, if you want to see the very best actors tear it up on the screen, this is it. This is tantamount to a thespian nuclear explosion despite the film’s flaws. In both the movie and the play, there is a fantastic quote and playwright Tracy Letts shares it straightaway: “My last refuge, my books: simple pleasures, like finding wild onions by the side of a road, or requited love.” You have to love that sentence.

The story is so hopeless that one wonders why we have to witness that? But, on the other hand, it is a glorious gladiatorial slaughter.

I give August: Osage County four bow ties out of five.