Second Spring Film Club: August Osage County
Film Review by
Mitford Girl.
Alison Belch is back with her brilliantly engaging Northern turn of phrase, sharp observations and limitless knowledge of Hollywood. I'm looking forward to seeing this 'good but not enjoyable' film, it sounds gritty and great. Second Springers you have been warned - bring a Magnum or 3, the ice cream or the gun...
I'm very guilty of being attracted to a film for its notable ensemble cast, caring not a jot for the subject matter, unless it's any sort of science fiction, of course. A similar overlooking of very dark, even harrowing, material must have indeed come over all the actors in John Wells' August: Osage County. There's only one not 'proper' famous in this resentment-riddled family drama, thus a raft of big names have cheerfully signed up to be miserable together.
One of the reasons for this is obvious in the first ten minutes; something about the long, well-considered chunks of dialogue; the screenplay is adapted from a play by Tracy Letts. Upon the disappearance of the father (Sam Shepard, so craggy, his eyes are barely open in his scene-setting monologue), family members arrive to support his wife, the ailing Violet (Meryl Streep) and each seems to have a little bit of stage business to establish character. How Hollywood actors love a play - it's the audience who must fight off the tedium/embarrassment, as anyone whoever saw Glengarry Glen Ross can tell you. Thank God you have me, a person incapable of not being extremely suspicious of a playwright called Tracy. No gravitas in that name. I've never been able to shake off the memory of Tracey Ullman saying she must have been the first famous Tracey and that her name made it difficult to amount to anything other than being cheeky to everyone while wheeling a pram round a council estate. I paraphrase shamelessly and Tracey Ullman is of course so successful in Hollywood that I'm surprised she wasn't in August: Osage County- apparently it was Harvey Weinstein who insisted on the inclusion of at least a couple of Brits in the cast.
However, it won't much matter who else is in it, for audiences and Academy voters, it'll be all about Meryl. I often find behind one great Oscar turn, there's another rather overlooked; take Tom Cruise in Rain Man or that German fella in The Reader. In this case, it's Julia Roberts, who has been palmed off with a Best Supporting nomination, for which she will likely win. Not that she isn't really excellent in this film, but for the Academy, the extreme crossness, grey roots and 'big butt' padding will clinch it for a role that's arguably more complex than Meryl's malevolent matriarch. Roberts plays the eldest daughter of three in the story, whose marriage is disintegrating and whose own daughter has what we now call 'issues' but really think of as a right wee madam who needs to know who's Boss. The Julia Roberts character is the mother's favourite but a few minutes of Violet's onscreen company demonstrate that you'd have been safer receiving parental love snuggling up to Saddam Hussein in his bunker. The most striking scenes are those in which Pretty Woman proves just how far she has come; more than a match for the acknowledged greatest actress of our times.
Meryl Streep's Violet is suffering from mouth cancer (one of the other characters points out the metaphor here, for the poisonous invective that is her every utterance) and heavily drug-addicted, as well as riddled with opinionated malice. The self-serving astuteness of the addict is monstrously demonstrated in all her dealings with the others, who necessarily and individually portray their own very many neuroses, in attempting to remain upright under the onslaught of her critical and resentful insight. 'Psychiatric cabaret' is what my sisters and I call it, derived from the 1980's film Plenty, also starring Meryl Streep and Tracey Ullman, funny enough. There is merely one short scene allowing some insight into why this is so and by then, you'll be wishing you'd brought a 3-pack of Magnums in your handbag. The ice cream or the gun.
Some reviews talked of comic elements but I can't say I was 'feeling it', to use popular vernacular. I did, however, admire the performances in some of the minor characters, particularly Margo Martindale as Mattie Fae and Julianne Nicholson as Ivy. You always get great names in a Southern drama (best ever: Mae Mobley in The Help - I knew someone threatening to get pregnant in order to popularise it) but that won't make up for entertainment that Iseult O'Brien would probably call 'good but not enjoyable'. My companion and I were pretty much traumatised when we emerged from the cinema. Let's face it, we've all got a family with secrets, compromises, resentments and competitiveness. So let me advise you, Second Springers, make sure, before you go to see this film, that you've had a great week, a good meal and a course of HRT.
Read more film reviews by Alison Belch:
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