This week, I have two films for you that involve family, heartbreak and Oscar candidacy. “August Osage County” features an all-star cast, including Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts (both up for Oscars), as a crumbling family, bitterly reunited after the disappearance of the patriarch. “The Broken Circle Breakdown” is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and is about the tragic journey of a beautiful, loving family that is bound for horrible grief.
“August Osage County” is a darkly comic drama featuring themes of suicide, infidelity, incest and drug abuse. It is based on a play by Tracy Letts. From my experience with two other films also based on his work, “Bug” and “Killer Joe,” this one seems comparatively light.
The pill-popping, cancer-suffering mother (Streep) gathers her family members after her husband (Sam Shepard) hires a housekeeper (Misty Upham) and leaves. With her sister (Margo Martindale), brother-in-law (Chris Cooper), three daughters (Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson), and granddaughter (Abigail Breslin) under one roof, she takes plenty of opportunities to degrade every one of them.
While this is a very cynical story about family and the filthy secrets that rise to the surface with age, I felt a kind of painful empathy for its flawed characters. The movie only lost me for a minute or two, when it added one scandal too many to this house of misfit Oklahomans.
This is another good big-cast film of 2013, which means that Benedict Cumberbatch had to put in an appearance, and he was good enough to do that. Ewan McGregor plays Roberts’ separated husband, and it should be said that he should stay away from American accents. They seem harmful to him.
It is really the women of this film who are its foundation and there is a lot of honor you must give them for the humiliation involved in becoming their characters. This movie is funny but not fun, if that makes any sense.
“The Broken Circle Breakdown” isn’t really funny at all. It is a strange multicultural experience of a film. Made in Belgium and unlike movies I’ve seen from that particular country, it is spoken in Flemish (one of the three major languages of the nation). It is also about a subculture of Bluegrass musicians with affection for the old-timey American mountain culture.
A husband and wife in the band have a daughter who becomes terminally ill with cancer. The story of the injured family is told out of sequence, like many great movies about tough subjects that need to find a balancing act between beauty and despair. This film is also based on a play and I imagine a setup similar to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” where its characters convey their struggles in a music venue with songs in between. The songs are gorgeous and the film is worth seeing just to hear them.
I found myself on a search for subtext when seeing a movie about people from a faraway land associating so strongly with American culture. I think that the country music theme seems to set the most joyful tone possible for people struggling with loss.
The movie’s aesthetic style is beautifully polished, if not always realistic. The lighting and choice of weather during certain scenes is reminiscent of Hollywood melodramas. This may clash with some viewers sensibilities, but I think this is what the film is going for. The production is gorgeous and the two talented leads are bravely naked (sometimes literally) before the camera lens. It’s a classic tragedy and its element of glamor is really up for debate.
“August: Osage County” is currently in theaters and “The Broken Circle Breakdown” opens at Village 8 Theaters this weekend.
Bennett Duckworth is a film fanatic who lives in Louisville and goes to see a movie in the theater at least once a week. He has kept a movie review blog since September of 2011 with the mission of writing about every new release he sees, as well as new trends in filmmaking and classic films he loves. You can read more of his reviews at www.bennettduckworth.blogspot.com.