August: Osage County

Wanna hear something crazy? Ya know how I never read books of movies? Well this is one I actually read!!! Not only that, I saw the play twice in NYC! So I actually know this story! That's crazy, innit?

August: Osage County tells the story of a dysfunctional family, reunited for the death of their father. Each daughter has a story. One of them is recently divorced. Another is facing another marriage, apparently one of many. The third of which is waiting to announce that she's secretly in love with and eloping with her first cousin. The two sisters of our main character also come, each with their own family secrets and problems to bring to the table. Realistically, I can't defend this story as anything special. In fact, I could kindof see it working as a soap. But its character development and amazing script is pretty amazing. So I had high expectations for this.

But I have to admit, while Meryl Streep, Cumberbatch, McGreggor, Breslin, Cooper, and the rest of the cast are absolutely mesmerizing, this just didn't work as a movie for me. The play works by showing the closeness of the family physically despite a complete emotional disconnect. It shifts between each characters personal problems while still clearly seeing character interaction in other places. This didn't translate to film very well, mostly because the transitions were generally speaking unnoticed. Granted, there's no real way that I can think of to adjust for this. But it just didn't do anything for me.

So I guess the best thing to say about August: Osage County is that the performances are all dynamite. But then again, even this works a bit to a fault. It's an exhausting movie. And that's definitely a good dynamic for a film this dark to have. But it almost becomes tiring. It's like watching a wrestling match, but instead of wrestling, it's a bunch of actors using a script that each of them is trying to get an Oscar for. That's not the actors fault. It's pretty much entirely the script's. And it works as a heck of a lot of obvious Oscar-worthy performances.

Is there strong qualities tot his film? Absolutely. But it doesn't carry itself quite as well as other films adapted from plays do. On my mind currently is Carnage, which was definitely the more successful movie to me.

Rank - 2.5/5