Four stars. Rating: R, for frequent profanity and earthy dialogue, and occasional drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.24.14
Some children dream,
worshipfully, of growing up to become just like their parents.
Other children have nightmares
about that same possibility.
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| As Violet (Meryl Streep, left) grows increasingly annoyed by a clumsy before-meal prayer that stumbles its way from awkward to tedious, daughters Ivy (Julianne Nicholson, center) and Karen (Juliette Lewis) close their eyes and wait for the inevitable explosion. |
August: Osage County, adapted
by Tracy Letts from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, charts the highs (very
few) and lows (too many to tabulate) of the extended Weston family, brought by
unexpected tragedy to the Northern Oklahoma town that several of them fled,
years ago, in self-defense.
Although Oklahoma isn’t
technically a southern state — nor is it one of the plains states, despite an
early comment by one of these characters — the tone here is very much in the
dysfunctional Southern gothic tradition of Tennessee Williams, Beth Henley and
numerous other playwrights who regard this classic American setting as less a
geographical place, and more a regional attitude.
Southern families argue in a
style all their own, tempers often as high as the mercury-shattering
thermometers. And they don’t merely bicker; they dig at each other with
rapacious delight, unerringly targeting each victim’s soft underbelly. Characters
in such settings turn sniping into an art form, perhaps even an Olympic sport.
It’s impossible to imagine
Northern California families quarrelling in such a fashion, no matter how strained
the relations. The cadence, rhythm and circumstances are quintessentially
rooted south of the Mason-Dixon line. Or thereabouts.
Be advised, then: Despite its
mesmerizing script and bravura performances, August: Osage County is an
endurance test in the manner of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It’s not easy
to watch people eviscerate each other for two hours, no matter how crisp the
dialogue, or how striking the acting.
Most of the slicing and dicing
emanates from family matriarch Violet Weston (Meryl Streep), an embittered,
waspish harridan embracing old age with no grace whatsoever. Demonstrating that
God does indeed possess a mordant sense of humor, Violet has just been
diagnosed with mouth cancer, which has exacerbated her tendency to be a
prescription junkie.
But the cancer hasn’t muted Violet’s
bark, nor has it diminished her nicotine habit. Nothing is more ghastly — or
darkly amusing, in a gallows humor sort of way — than watching Streep gently
poke a cigarette into the less painful left corner of her mouth, and then fire
it up so she can puff away.
And the cancer diagnosis isn’t
the catalyst for the impromptu reunion, at least not directly. Violet’s husband
Beverly, once a respected poet and author now content to slide into comfortable
alcoholism, has gone on another of his infrequent “sojourns,” no doubt to
escape his wife’s nasty tongue. But the circumstances are a bit different this
time, because before departing he hired a young woman, Johnna (Misty Upham), to
cook and clean. And that isn’t like him.
Violet’s sister Mattie Fae (Margo
Martindale) hits the panic button, which assembles the troops. Violet’s eldest
daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts), expecting only that her mother will need
another stint in rehab, arrives with 14-year-old daughter Jean (Abigail
Breslin) and estranged husband Bill (Ewan McGregor) in tow. Barbara and Bill,
not having disclosed their marital discord, have agreed to play nice for the
sake of family harmony.
We can imagine, given Violet’s
watchful eye and sharp instincts, how long that secret will last.
Youngest Weston daughter Karen
(Juliette Lewis) arrives next, with flashy new fiancé Steve (Dermot Mulroney)
at the wheel of his red sports car. One glimpse of Steve, and we know he’s Bad
News; we also deduce that Karen has made a career of wretched relationship
choices, a failing that she defends during a stream-of-consciousness whine with
Barbara.
Steve, living down to our worst
expectations, catches a whiff of marijuana in Jean’s hair, and promises to set
her up with some primo weed, as soon as they can get alone.
We’ve actually already met middle
daughter Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), because she’s the one who stayed behind, to
watch over her parents ... and mostly to function as a meek whipping post for
her mother’s relentless lashings. If Barbara is the strong one, and Karen the
ditz, then Ivy is the long-suffering loyal subject, having put her own life on
hold for decades.
The clan is completed by Mattie
Fae’s husband Charlie (Chris Cooper) and their son, Little Charles (Benedict
Cumberbatch). Charlie is a kind-hearted pillar of integrity who does his best
to maintain order and/or keep the peace under increasingly combustible
circumstances; Little Charles, suffering from galloping insecurity, barely
seems able to function in the big, wide world.
Although Letts’ script finds
ample reasons for smaller subsets of these characters to mingle and chew at
each other, during the several days that this narrative occupies, the film’s
galvanic scene comes the one time everybody assembles around the massive dinner
table. Television’s Blue Bloods has made a weekly tradition of its family
Sunday dinner gathering, as a means of summing up recent events and sending
viewers to bed with a comfortable smile; rest assured, comfort isn’t on Letts’
menu here.
But this soon-to-be-tempestuous
meal also begins with the film’s funniest moment, as poor Charlie struggles
with the demand that he lead a prayer. Never has anybody been less equipped for
such an assignment, and Cooper flounders for what seems like days, while
Streep’s eyes narrow in ever-greater exasperation, and we wait for the
inevitable explosion of contempt.
You’ll want to laugh, but you
likely won’t, for fear that, somehow, Streep’s malicious gaze will break the
fourth wall and spot your insolence. At which point, God help you.
It’s difficult to know where to
start, with a cast this strong. Certainly Streep and Roberts deserve their
Oscar nominations — actress and supporting actress, respectfully — but director
John Wells gets everybody to bring their A-game. Even Upham, in the quietest
role — Johnna being a mostly passive observer — gets her moment to shine, in an
unexpected manner.
Cinema has no shortage of
actresses who’ve memorably tackled the “mother from hell” role, from Angela
Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate) and Shelley Winters (A Patch of Blue)
to, going further back, Margaret Wycherly (White Heat) and Bette Davis (The
Little Foxes). Streep, as she so often does, re-defines the template; her
Violet is the stuff of nightmares, from the moment she first stumbles down the
stairs, drug-intoxicated and hurling spiteful profanity like a dock worker.
As the film progresses, though,
our sense of Violet shifts. To be sure, she’s a miserably cruel human being,
but we can’t help admiring her survival instincts. And, as you’ll discover,
Violet doesn’t always go for the jugular; she withholds some key verbal cruise
missiles that arrive as third-act revelations. More to the point, despite her
many and varied flaws, Violet emerges as a figure of pity: somebody we know
will, one day, wind up dying alone.
That Streep draws such complex
feelings from us, is nothing short of amazing. But it’s not merely her
performance: Excellent as it is, she gets considerable ammunition from Letts’
perceptive and provocative dialogue.
Our impression, going in, is that
Violet will be the focus of her own story. That’s not entirely true, because
Violet is incapable of change. We gradually realize that Barbara is the key
player here, because, despite every effort to do otherwise, she has become that
which she most despises. She’s a terrible mother herself, wholly unable to cope
with Jean’s premature (and quite clumsy) march into adulthood.
The question, then, is whether
Barbara can surmount her own upbringing, and Roberts’ brutal, tight-lipped
performance evokes the tragedy of a woman who can’t claw her way out of the
purgatory she built for herself.
Lewis, with a string of flakes in
her performance past, is right at home with Karen’s chronic anxiety. She feigns
carefree insouciance, but it’s a pose. Watch her, during the aforementioned
dinner scene; Lewis sits, stricken and silent, her face a portrait of terror,
waiting for the verbal strike that would shatter her like glass.
Nicholson’s Ivy, though, is the
heartbreaker. Her face isn’t quite a perfect mask, although Ivy clearly tries
to withhold true feelings, the better to minimize any vulnerabilities that
Violet might exploit. Nicholson’s gentle, wary performance evokes memories of
Laura Winfield, from The Glass Menagerie: the same fragility and, we deduce,
isolation from a world — a life — that has passed her by.
I’m always fascinated by the ease
with which British actors slip into Deep South Americana characters; both
McGregor and Cumberbatch do so effortlessly here. We don’t get a strong sense
of McGregor’s Bill, although it’s not hard to imagine that his marital
transgressions likely were self-defense as, over time, Barbara became more and
more like her mother.
Cumberbatch, though, is a
revelation: his Little Charles the frightened-bird antithesis of the Sherlock
Holmes who strides so confidently across our TV screens these days. Between
this film and 12 Years a Slave, Cumberbatch demonstrates an impressive range,
and an uncanny ability to inhabit such decisively American roles.
Mulroney is the pluperfect heel;
Martindale, all over the place these days, is her own force of nature as the
aggressive Mattie Fae. Breslin, sadly, is too often shunted to the side; Wells
doesn’t grant Jean as much screen time as Letts did on stage, and, as a result,
Breslin doesn’t make her more than a one-note spoiled, self-absorbed teenager.
Shepard opens the film, both on
camera and with an off-camera narrative voice — poetic and laden with weary
regret — that perfectly sets the stage for what is to follow.
Considering this material’s
origins, Wells and Letts “open it up” quite well; we never get the sense of
claustrophobia that sometimes afflicts stage-to-film adaptations. Credit
cinematographer Adriano Goldman, as well, for so deftly conveying the
oppressive heat; his images almost shimmer with soul-draining fever.
Watching such a roster of scene-stealing
actors work their way through such material is never less than exciting, even
as the unfolding drama becomes increasingly difficult to endure. To reference
the old cliché, it’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck; we want to look
away, but can’t.
And, similarly, you won’t soon
forget many of this film’s blisteringly vivid confrontations.
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