Meryl Streep & Julia Roberts Have a Dinner From Hell in This Oscar-Nominee
Jun 17, 2024
The Big Picture
A standout dinner scene with powerhouse actors elevates
August: Osage County
to a must-watch status.
From Meryl Streep to Julia Roberts, the performances are unforgettable and earned Oscar nominations for their raw portrayal.
Tracy Letts’ stage play adaptation maintains intense emotional depth, creating an iconic cinematic experience.
It’s been just over 10 years since August: Osage County premiered, and to this day, it’s among the most rewatchable and continuously captivating dramas of this century. Well, you could call it a drama, perhaps even a dark comedy, but no category sufficiently sums up the variety of heartstrings this film tugs at from moment to moment. Moreover, it gave us one of if not the greatest dinner scenes ever filmed. It’s a bold claim, considering fellow contenders include Alien, Beetlejuice, and Meet the Parents, to name a few.
Merely listing the players in this scene would be enough of a hook: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Misty Upham, Chris Cooper, and esteemed character actress Margo Martindale. How do you even get that many heavy hitters in one room? On top of that, Sam Shepard’s presence is consistently palpable from off-screen (that will make sense in a moment). Every beat played out in this sequence keeps eyes glued and jaws dropped. At a runtime of almost 20 minutes, this iconic dinner scene is just one of many reasons to watch and revere August: Osage County.
August: Osage County Release Date December 26, 2013 Runtime 130 Main Genre Comedy Writers Tracy Letts Expand
What Is ‘August: Osage County’ About?
August: Osage County, which screenwriter Tracy Letts adapted from his 2007 stage play of the same name, takes place almost entirely on the Weston family property. It’s a large, weathered home covered in the drippings of old money that likely wouldn’t amount to much outside this forgotten rural corner of the Southwest. Every dimly lit corner and creaking floorboard carries the memories of this family, and they’re about to relive every last one of them. As the title indicates, it’s August, marked by the unbearable heat of Osage County, Oklahoma.
Violet Weston (Streep) lives in their long-standing home with her husband, Beverly (Shepard), and their caretaker, Johnna (Upham), whom Beverly hired just before his disappearance. Although he’s known to go off on lone benders after a marital fight every so often, this time it’s different, and Violet calls in the cavalry. Barbara (Roberts), her eldest daughter, comes back to the family home with her estranged husband Bill (McGregor) and teenage daughter Jean (Breslin). Barbra’s sisters are the reserved Ivy (Nicholson) who never left home, and the endearing but superficial Karen (Lewis). Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae (Martindale) is married to Charles (Cooper), and together they have a son, Little Charles (Cumberbatch). Rounding out the group is Karen’s sleazy fiancé, Steve. When it’s discovered that Beverly drowned in a nearby lake (likely intentionally), the entire family gathers for several tumultuous days, which include a funeral, a subsequent volatile dinner, and a prime opportunity for the darkest truths of the family to be unearthed.
A 20-Minute Dinner Scene Is the Explosive Centerpiece of ‘August: Osage County’
After Beverly’s funeral, the entire family gathers for dinner at the Weston home. Violet, the matriarch and now sole head of the household, slowly makes her way to the head of the table, but not before popping a few pills in secret. Beverly was the drinker, and Violet coped with drugs — an unwritten stipulation in their marriage contract. The air is already rife with grievances and exhaustive interaction when dinner begins. Violet enters with an old photo of herself with Beverly from a happier time, asking Barbra to display it near the table. Violet immediately undercuts the sweet moment by scolding the men for removing their suit jackets. “I thought we were having a funeral dinner… not a cockfight.” What follows plays out like a musical score; the underlying tension bubbles under the surface, rising and falling with each intermittent shouting match or piercing glance across the table.
Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts Earned Oscar Nominations for ‘August: Osage County’
Image Via The Weinstein Company
The most in-our-faces awe-worthy aspect is, of course, the acting. Streep, as you’d expect, transforms herself into Violet from head to toe, and every year of this character’s long life oozes out of her, from the intentionally audible breaths taken over someone else’s words to the smallest quivering of her lips when she knows someone’s lying. Roberts as Barbara, the eldest daughter who is ever reluctant to notice how close to the tree the apple has fallen, goes head-to-head with Streep in one of the most natural pairings of seasoned actors yet. At its core, although this is a large family, August: Osage County is Violet and Barbara’s story. Naturally, of the accolades garnered by the film, Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress went to Streep and Roberts, respectively. The whole film is a succession of unforgettable moments, but the dinner scene at its center puts all the best on full display. This stretches beyond Streep and Roberts, too. For a roster of widely recognizable names and faces, there’s not a moment in which you don’t buy their relations to one another.
Related Who Are the Most Oscar-Nominated Actors? And who has the best losing face?
In building to this sequence, Violet and Barbara pull each other back and forth, knowing exactly which buttons to press. Barb knows that Violet’s been abusing her pills again. She has mouth cancer, but her doctor over-prescribes her, and there’s no one around to keep her in check. When Violet is on them, her unpredictability is off the charts. When the dinner begins, the formalities are quickly passed over. Violet then manages to take this family through the most grueling exercise of her harshest truths. “I’m just truth-telling,” she protests. She’ll easily admonish Karen for her flimsy love life or reveal to everyone the woes of Barbara and Bill’s marriage, but when Violet receives an ounce of pushback, an eruption ensues.
The deep well of Streep’s investment has you fully believing the confession of Violet and Mattie Fae’s traumatic past, a dramatic epilogue of beatings and trauma. The metaphorical teapot boils over when Barbara decides she’s had enough and wrestles her mother to the floor to try to extract the bottle of pills from her hand (making for the fantastic poster shot). The scene ends with Barbara declaring herself the new alpha — “I AM RUNNING THINGS NOW!” — and Violet is unrecognizable as she shrivels into childlike petulance at her eldest daughter’s authority. The dinner scene has given way to a new power struggle, altering the audience’s perception of the characters for the rest of the film.
Writer Tracy Letts Brought the Drama of Theater to the Screen
Throughout the dinner, multiple miniature plays unfold among separate pairings, trios, and quartets. It’s fitting, considering the film is an adaptation of screenwriter Tracy Letts’ stage play, and so rarely is the specific nature of real-time theatre seamlessly translated onto the screen. This dinner is at once a divorce settlement, a near-outing of forbidden love, a tearful occasion of loving reminiscence, and a series of heinous accusations. Eyes dart from one end of the table to the next, adjusting their targets between parents, children, siblings, secret lovers, in-laws, and near strangers.
From the original theatrical script to the screen adaptation, Letts kept all the complexities of theatre alive. It’s not the sort of dark comedy that is at times dramatic and at times hilarious; a singular moment, line of dialogue, or reactionary face carries multiple nuanced significances at once. An entire orchestra of human emotionality is playing out. On stage, the audience has their choice of POV. From one night to the next, not only are the actors’ performances varied, but a recurring patron could follow an entirely different character for the entire sequence. Even though the film version of the scene steers you towards certain POVs, the collective depth brought by each actor offers entirely new insight, even after a dozen viewings. While Streep and Roberts command well-deserved attention, let your gaze linger on Martindale or Cumberbatch, exasperated with each other from opposite ends of the table. Catch Breslin dodging in and out of annoyance while accidentally feeling moments of joy that she tries to mask.
Director John Wells and cinematographer Adriano Goldman don’t offer wide shots, avoiding an overly cinematic display. No, this is a real house and a real family, and you’re going to sit respectfully for this funeral dinner. Nearly every view is from an eye-level position of someone seated at the table, allowing us to fully feel as if we’re sitting in the same discomfort. At times, you want to wave away the smoke from Violet’s cigarette or avert your eyes to escape a judging gaze. There’s no flashiness or trickery here; we’ve got 20 raw minutes with some of the most formidable actors working today, delivering the dialogue of a performer’s dreams with a director that brings the best out of Hollywood’s very best.
August: Osage County is currently streaming on Prime Video.
WATCH ON Amazon Prime
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