August; Osage County

A. O. Scott just reviewed August Osage County, the film in the NY Times.  For those of you who saw the broadway production, consider this if you see the film. Mr. Scott is not wrong to beat up on the film, it pretty much fails. He is way off the mark when he tries to apportion blame. Tracy Letts adapted his own material so its hard to imagine he could screw it up that badly. The actors are a fine lot save Julia Roberts, but its hard to pin the failure of the picture on her. The directer could be blamed for it all and that is not entirely wrong but it is ultimately unfair. Where Mr. Scott goes wrong is in trying to blame the material. He admits to never seeing the play but suggests that he is taking the (positive) word of friends who have. The material was never the point. The story, as he suggests, is far from original in its content. The strength of the stage play was how it was told. It remains one of the best pieces of theatre in years to land on Broadway and the awards it garnered were not mis-applied. Yet the film falls flat. What Mr. Scott does not realize is that the main culprit is the medium itself. Film forces a point of view because it, by necessity, frames and focuses your attention. Its nature is voyeuristic and intrusive. Film had no choice but to take a wild unwieldy theatrical experience and squeezed it like toothpaste through the aperture of a camera into a thin, unbroken, uncomplicated, ultimately unlikeable line.