The story is simple enough – and a bit familiar:
Two brothers start a business from their apartment and quickly become the heads of a successful, publicly-traded company. With success comes friction of all kinds and the tension only multiplies when the company suddenly starts to blunder.
It’s one thing to tell a story; it is completely another to capture a time period. And it is on this principal that August becomes noteworthy.
The company in the film is a “dot com” start-up and the movie takes its title from a specific month: August 2001. Do a little digging (in your memory or on Google…) and you’ll soon realize the significance: In July 2001 the stock market started diving and the dot-com world went from “cool kid” to “leper-eating-onions” status almost overnight. So it is with this specific cultural context that screenwriter Howard A. Rodman chooses to examine issues of pride, self-actualization, and brotherly love.
Josh Hartnett may be best known as a former teen heartthrob, but he holds his own as Tom Sterling - balancing the character’s overwhelming cockiness with his veiled lack of self-esteem. Adding to the film’s acting fiber is a strong supporting performance from Adam Scott (Six Feet Under, Veronica Mars) as the other Sterling Brother, Joshua. Thrown in (most likely for star power) are brief and effective appearances from Robin Tunney, Rip Torn and David Bowie – but the script and acting are strong enough to survive without the big names.
The film also benefits – completely coincidentally – from current cultural timing. The summer of 2001 is now being revisited often in reference on news programs due to the economic climate of 2008 – the worst stock market plummet since those days at the beginning of the decade. And August helps put some things in perspective by showing that at the end of the day money may not be the most important thing after all.
1 comment:
onions eat lepers?
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