Tracy Letts’ 2007 award-friendly play gets the big screen treatment, with an astonishing cast in memorably horrible form.
In Osage County, Okla., we meet drunk, depressed Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard) as he hires Johnna (Misty Upham) to care for his cancer suffering, pill-popping, drama-queen wife Violet (Meryl Streep, who is at full form as usual).
When Beverly winds up dead, the family slowly unites for the funeral and ferocious battles. First, there’s Violet’s sister, Mattie (Margo Martindale); her husband, Charlie (Chris Cooper); and their hopeless son, ‘Little Charles’ (Benedict Cumberbatch, who I think wasted a plane ticket for the amount of screen time he received, but did exceptional as expected). In addition, there’s Violet’s resentful daughter, Barbara (Julia Roberts); her drifting away husband, Bill (Ewan McGregor, again who wasn’t utilized as much as I hoped); their fed-up daughter, Jean (Abigail Breslin); their second daughter, Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), quietly furious at being lumped with Mom’s care; and their self-obsessed youngest (so to speak), Karen (Juliette Lewis), who brings her fiancé, Steve Huberbrecht (Dermot Mulroney), an appealing meathead who has no idea what he’s getting into.
Directed by John Wells (whose The Company Men also features famous faces and a dark edge), this plays at first like a slightly sad character comedy but then turns surprisingly nasty, with Streep portraying about the most poisonous character in her entire career.
Perhaps it’s a mistake to release it over the Christmas period, as many moviegoers don’t want to see this sort of vicious thing onscreen when they are trying to live festively, but other than that, the film is quite enjoyable. The stage show had to be cut down to fit on screen, and this movie makes me really want to see it performed live. August: Osage County is a rather enjoyable black comedy that shows if you have that many family secrets under one roof, it’s bound to explode.
