Oklahoma writ large

Brilliantly written and acted, “August: Osage County” suffers from a lack of vision behind the camera

“August: Osage County,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play from Tulsa native Tracy Letts is an amazing piece of work. They don’t hand out those Pulitzers like peanuts in coach class, after all. Even if you haven’t seen the stage show, just kicking back on a Sunday night reading Letts’ sublime story and vibrant characters is a contenting, rich experience to be savored. Its blackly comedic tone and rancorous familial dysfunction form a uniquely entertaining whole.

Barbara, Karen and Ivy Weston (Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson, respectively), are three sisters who reunite at their ancestral home after their father, Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard) goes missing. Their mother, Violet (Meryl Streep), battles cancer by whole-heartedly embracing her pill addiction, and by honing her capacity for cutting observations, or “truth telling,” to a razor’s edge. When things take a turn for the worse and Bev winds up dead, the coming together of the family reveals resentments, rivalries and secrets that threaten to tear them apart.

It’s a dark story, though not so much as the other two films based on Letts’ work, “Bug” and “Killer Joe.” Infidelity, incest, drug addiction, suicide and molestation ensue, but the tone strikes a precarious balance between Tennessee Williams-esque drama and barbed, black-as-a-mineshaft laughs that seem to arrive during the narrative’s most awkward moments. It’s a balance that director John Wells doesn’t quite pull off — mainly because it feels like he has such a light touch. In the hands of Robert Altman, who was a master at blending those kinds of atonalities, “August” would likely have felt more organically executed. It’s as though Wells saw that he had a great script (penned by Letts himself) and a band of top actors and just let them do all the work. Ideally, that’s what you’d want to do (a strong foundation never hurt a film) but it helps to have a stylistic signature, or even a hand for nuance.

Luckily, the assemblage of titanic acting talent rescues the film somewhat — though a few scenery-chewing moments sometimes threaten to cross into caricature. Meryl Streep seems primed to take yet another trip to the Academy stage. Her Ivy Weston is an iconic, Southern Gothic matriarch who seems like she’s going off the rails when in fact none of the wool really gets pulled over her eyes. Julia Roberts oozes the cold regality of a woman struggling to maintain control as her marriage to Bill (Ewan McGregor in a fine, charming turn) goes south.

Juliette Lewis is in a revelatory zone as Karen Weston, whose relationship choices also leave something to be desired. Margo Martindale, Chris Cooper and Benedict Cumberbatch are outstanding in supporting roles.

The idyllic countryside and cloistered interiors of the Weston home are tangibly captured by Adriano Goldman’s warm cinematography, making for a pretty film. But it’s one with a fair amount of artifice. Really, all of the interlocking parts of Letts’ story work. Here, they just need a shot of WD-40.