August: Osage County has a lot going for it. It has a lot of what a great film needs – rich characters, excellent performances and a well-constructed narrative. Despite this, it is a play, not a film.
Firstly, praise. Everyone on screen does a fantastic job, especially Meryl Streep whose turn as the family’s poisonous matriarch is definitely as Oscar-worthy as Cate Blanchett’s Blue Jasmine (one or the other should win it). The writing is solid. The dialogue rises from a cast of characters so well drawn that the story feels multi-protagonist despite it being clear that Julia Roberts’ Barbara has the most defined arch. As with the best stories, it isn’t forced. The drama, darkness and comedy all leak incidentally out of the narrative which comes simply because the family of characters bump, bounce and clash naturally.
The best scenes are those that jump out as being obviously written for stage. Simmering emotions in claustrophobic rooms make for dialogue that just fizzes. 2 hours went by with my engagement unbroken because the combination of great writing and great acting hold the thing together like gaffa tape.
However.
The things that are great about the film don’t belong on film. They don’t utilise in any way what film can do.
That great edict ‘show don’t tell’ applies just as much in the cinema as it does on the stage. But what changes from medium to medium is what can be shown. On the stage, dialogue is king. What is said and what is not said is what makes a great play. I’ve no doubt that August: Osage County is a great play because what I just saw at the cinema was a great play… but not a film.
When putting a play on film, certain things need changing to make it work in the new medium. What Osage County needed in its adaptation was to make room for a film director to bring something cinematic to proceedings. One simple thing a film can do, for example, is extreme close-ups; audiences can see large emotional shifts in small facial gestures, something that simply can’t travel 10 rows when watching a play in a theatre. In that case, why not replace some of the hefty dialogue with some carefully judged close-ups, or a smart cutaway, or a tracking shot or just something cinematic? Anything would do.
Plays do their ‘showing’ in dialogue, films do theirs in visuals.
The failure is not the direction; it is the adaptation. It feels as if nothing has been adapted. The director is given nothing to do. I can only assume that there’s something intrinsic about the play that Tracy Letts wanted to preserve and couldn’t bring himself to lose in the translation. It may well be that changing what is intrinsic about it for the cinema would ruin its essence. But in that case, why put it on film?
Probably money?
By virtue of the medium, cinema can reach a wide audience cheaply in no time at all – you travel miles to see a play in a specific theatre in a specific city whereas films pretty much come to you wherever you are. Maybe its producers thought that slapping August: Osage County onto the big screen as it is would stick like magic. Or maybe they thought it would just make a tonne of money.
Jon Bates Writes 