Ever thought your family were dysfunctional? Think again.
John Wells’ latest film, August: Osage County, based on the successful Broadway play and featuring no shortage of well known faces, centers around one family’s trouble with suicide, incest, abuse, depression, alcoholism, addiction, illness, the list goes on...
George Clooney was one of the film’s producers which perhaps explains the star studded cast including Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin (remember Little Miss Sunshine), Juliette Lewis and Benedict Cumberbatch.
The setting is Osage County (the title gives it away somewhat), in the height of an unusually hot August, the rising temperatures only adding to the heightened tensions at the Weston family home, as three daughters rally around their cancer stricken mother following the suicide of their alcoholic father.
The desolate, flat and dry landscape of rural Pawhuska, Oklhoma, does much to add to the bleak depiction of modern family life.
Having all gone their separate ways and departed the family nest, the family crisis brings them back to the Oklahoma house they grew up in.
The matriarch Violet is played by the ever brilliant Meryl Streep, whilst Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson, and Juliette Lewis play her now grown-up daughters. Barbara (Roberts) is her eldest and arrives from Colorado with her husband Bill (McGregor- who has a VERY questionable American accent), from whom she is separated, along with their tenacious fourteen year old daughter (Breslin); next is Karen (Lewis) the middle child who has relocated to the sun state of Florida and is engaged to her latest boyfriend, whom we learn has already had three previous wives; finally, the youngest daughter, Ivy, still lives locally and is involved with her cousin, Little Charles, (Cumberbatch), who later actually turns out to be her brother after it is revealed the girls' late father had an affair with his sister in law Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale).
Families hey?
The drama reaches its peak as the family sit down to a dinner following the funeral where Violet's brutal "truth telling" reveals the full extent of her addiction to prescribed medication.
After managing to alienate all three of her daughters, they depart the family plot one by one, leaving their mother alone with only the maid Johanna for support.
The tension is momentarily lightened by brilliant comedic outbursts, leaving you unsure as to whether you should be crying or laughing. For me, the film reached its height of ridiculousness and hilarity when Karen’s fiance is found fondling Barbara’s daughter in the back yard after providing her with marijuana; he is then hit over the head with a shovel by the hired help, a Native American woman Johanna (Misty Upham). By this point my housemates were definitely bewildered and unimpressed that I had persuaded them to spend a valuable Orange Wednesday ticket watching this with me...
The film is incredibly dark and the problems encountered in this one family sphere seem never ending, verging almost on the ridiculous, which also provides the comic undertone throughout.
Whilst certainly never boring it veers slightly towards over the top silliness as one drama after the other is revealed, resulting in viewers having to suspend their disbelief. Aside from the initial suicide nothing much happens: this is not a plot driven narrative but one where individual grievances slowly unfold to form a larger picture of one family’s intense dysfunctionality.
Released just after Christmas it probably gave viewers a chance to reflect on their own problems following the festive period, where long periods of time cooped up together always ensures that family tensions are to emerge in one way or another.
I'm still unsure as to whether this was comic brilliancy or sheer weirdness, but definitely go and watch it and decide for yourselves.
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