August: Osage County
John Wells
The story: The patriarch of the Weston clan, Beverly (Sam Shepard), goes missing from the home he shares with his cancer-stricken wife, Violet (Meryl Streep), in rural Oklahoma. Family members congregate and emotions boil over in the sweltering heat. There is oldest daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts), who comes with her estranged husband Bill (Ewan McGregor) and their 14-year-old daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin); middle daughter Karen (Juliette Lewis) with her inappropriately flashy fiance Steve (Dermot Mulroney); and youngest daughter Ivy (Julianne Nicholson). There is also Violet’s sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale), her husband Charles (Chris Cooper) and their son Little Charles (Benedict Cumberbatch). Adapted by Tracy Letts from his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2007 stage drama of the same name.

If you are dreading that extended family reunion at Chinese New Year, here is one remedy – go watch August: Osage County. It is guaranteed to make you feel better about your own.
Violet is the mother who smothers, not with love but with withering putdowns and she tears into everyone over a session of vicious “truth- telling” at a family dinner.
She may be battling cancer of the mouth, but she is far from a sympathetic victim, thanks to her incessant pill-popping and verbal lacerations.
It is a dream role to tear into and Meryl Streep notches up her 18th Oscar nomination playing nasty. The actress has been much feted for her ability to take on different accents, but the transformation this time is more physical than linguistic.
In some scenes, her character is shown without a wig and the thin, patchy and unkempt hair gives her a touching vulnerability which her fighting words mask.
Then there is the all-out cat-fight with Julia Roberts as they tussle over a bottle of downers and the smashing of crockery at yet another awkward meal.
In the tradition of dysfunctional family plays such as Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956), this is drama to the max and practically every actor gets a scene or two to show his or her stuff.
No wonder so many top names eagerly signed on for this adaptation by director John Wells, best known as the executive producer and showrunner of television shows such as ER (1994-2009).
Roberts gets to be angry and hurt and to swear a lot as her husband barks at her: “You’re a pain in the a**.”
There is a degree of Oscar-baiting about the film and she has been duly rewarded with a nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
There is so much bluster and fury, though, that it becomes a little draining to watch. And the specifics do not really stick and some of the talk, say, about the attractiveness of women, meanders about without being particularly interesting.
And because the volume is constantly set to high, the dramatic revelations lose some of their impact as family secrets eventually tumble into the open.
Some of the more touching moments come from Julianne Nicholson’s wallflower Ivy and Benedict Cumberbatch’s earnest and klutzy Little Charles, the antithesis of his best-known role as the brilliant and cold Sherlock Holmes.
Eventually, the toxic cruelty even gets to the laidback Charles, who lashes out: “I don’t understand why you have to be so mean.”
It is a question that you might well ask yourself.
(ST)