Streep and Roberts go for the gold in August: Osage County

During the end of the year, you can usually count on hearing about – if not seeing until sometime in the new year – those movies that people like to call “Oscar bait.” Two of the Christmas releases certainly fall into that category (American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street), as does a third that’s now opening across the country after getting a limited run in some larger markets in order to qualify for … the Oscars!

August: Osage County comes with a major pedigree. The movie is based on the Tony Award winning Best Play, which also won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Pretty heady stuff for a movie to live up to. The story centers on the Weston family, who are anything but the typical mid-westerners movies like to portray as stereotypically down to earth and bonded. No, the Westons can barely be in a room together without some type of disagreement arising. Unfortunately, a sudden death in the family brings the three Weston daughters back home to deal with their pill-addicted, chain-smoking mother who knows everyone’s dirty little secrets and isn’t afraid to reveal them, usually at the dining room table.

Violet Weston (Meryl Streep) has an acid tongue – ironic in a way since she also has mouth cancer – and gets along the best with daughter Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), mainly because she’s the one who’s stayed close to home. She could care less about Karen (Juliette Lewis), but she has the most disdain for oldest daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts), who flew the coop and broke her father’s heart, or so Violet tells her. There are also more relatives and spouses who converge on the Weston home, and Violet is sure to have a choice word or two for all of them, including her new caretaker Johnna (Misty Upham). As everyone tries to deal with their grief and their secrets (separations, secret love affairs, even deeper family secrets), the daughters also realize that Violet needs help because of her addiction.

Streep, naturally, steals the show with her performance as the addled matriarch of the family. Whether she’s boozy, high or just downright vicious, she is riveting to watch especially as she spars verbally and physically with Roberts. Roberts also is magnetic and can certainly hold her own against Streep, holding in her anger throughout the film until it just boils over, making you gasp and cheer at the same time as she lunges across the dining room table to give Violet the smackdown she’s been asking for.

As you watch these two perform though, no matter how great they are, you kinda start to think that these are exactly the kind of roles people take to win an Oscar. You start to wonder if it was simply because of the material, the cast, the other actors and then it all comes around to realizing that, even though no one will admit it, someone’s agent and manager said, “This is a role that will win you an Oscar,” so they took it. To me, this movie felt like a spotlight for Streep and Roberts. That’s not to take away from anyone else because Nicholson gives a very nice, quiet, painful performance that could be overshadowed by the theatrics of Streep and Roberts. Lewis is criminally under-used, so much so that you wish she did have more screen time. Chris Cooper probably stands out the most as he tries to hold the family together, but the other cast members almost fade into the dark shadows of the Weston home (and Benedict Cumberbatch just seems completely out of place).

The film is handsomely produced and well-directed by John Wells, and it certainly has quality written all over it. The script by Tracey Letts (who also wrote the play) crackles with energy and keeps the plot rolling. It’s definitely a very good movie, one of the best films of the year but is it the Best Picture of the year? As much as I enjoyed it all around (it is in my top ten list for 2013), as much as I loved the Dynasty-style brawl and cutting dialogue, it just felt in the end that this was all put together for one reason: to win awards. August: Osage County is terrific entertainment but it still feels a bit more shallow than anyone wants you to believe.