“Life is very long,” T.S. Elliot’s immortal maxim, opens August: Osage County, a pulsing panorama
of unfulfilled lives. It must certainly seem so to Beverly (a wonderful,
grizzly Sam Shepard), the melancholic poet patriarch of the quarrelsome Weston
clan, because before long he decides to take matters into his own hands. In the
first scene of the film, he is hiring a live-in caretaker (a thankfully
reserved Misty Upham) for his ailing wife, Violet (Meryl Streep in a role that
should garner her an Oscar if she didn’t already have a truckload). Beverly’s
bristly voice betrays a history of bitter disappointment, a lifetime spent
among a few good books and a few more bottles of booze. “Facts are my wife
takes pills, and I drink. That’s the bargain we’ve struck, a little paragraph
in our marriage contract.” This is only a small part of the family pathology
that director John Wells (The Company Men)
brings to the screen in August: Osage
County. When Shepard’s character takes his leave, you will miss him; you
might also envy him.
His family will soon gather to the faded farmhouse to pay their last
respects to Bev—and their disrespects to each other, in a scalding, stormy
symphony of sarcastic insults, sneaky insinuations, shouted accusations,
smashed plates, and slammed doors. Adapted from the acid-tongued,
Pulitzer-winning play by Tracy Letts, the movie’s raw, blistering, bitterly
funny dialogue lets loose a barrage of nasty recriminations, mocking taunts and
hurtful revelations, all hurled with corrosive aplomb by an electrifying
ensemble cast. Long-hidden secrets are unearthed, lessons learned, tears shed,
and award nominations eagerly besought.
