MetaCritic Score: 85
I need to watch something cheery one of these days. A large part of me loves these compelling, dark family dramas, but enough of them without something positive to break them up tends to wear you down.
That being said, I still really liked The Savages quite a bit. Philip Seymour Hoffman is really the best at what he does and I don’t find Laura Linney to be nearly as obnoxious as a lot of people I know do.
The Savages is the story of two middle-aged siblings, Jon and Wendy Savage, who are suddenly forced to care for their estranged father when his girlfriend, whose home he has been living in for the past 20 years, dies and he begins to show signs of dementia. Jon and Wendy are both aspiring but largely unsuccessful authors. Jon is a college professor who is writing a book on a 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brecht and Wendy takes temp work to pay her bills while she is writing a semi-autobiographical play on her troubled childhood. In addition, both struggle to form and hold meaningful relationships. Wendy is the “other woman” in the exceptionally dull affair of a married man, while Jon is letting his girlfriend of three years go back to Poland because of an expired visa rather than committing to marry her. They bring their father back to Buffalo and begin searching for a nursing home, while their father begins to slowly fade, becoming less aware of what is happening to him.
One thing I appreciate about the film is that it avoided the easy plot route, which would have been for the father’s declining condition to serve as an opportunity for the siblings to reconnect with their father and form the familial bond that they never had. Savages, instead, mainly focuses on the relationship between the siblings and doesn’t offer any easy answers or cliches.
Writer/director Tamara Jenkins dialogue was exceptionally well crafted and fit the characters perfectly. In addition, Jenkins did a great job of matching the sets and settings to match the tone of the film. Savages opens in the bright, vibrant retirement community of Sun City, Arizona. The elderly people here are very literally singing and dancing. This is a direct contrast to the dull, dark clinical atmosphere of the nursing home in Buffalo. Speaking of this contrast, I don’t think they could have chosen any two better places to represent the polarity of the situation than anywhere in sunny, beautiful Arizona and the only place in the country that may have even worse weather than Cleveland. The casting was also exceptional. Linney and PSH really felt like they could have been these characters in real life.
Overall, I’d rank The Savages a little bit above Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead in terms of finished product. Despite the subject matter of Savages, I think that it also has more of a popular appeal than Devil. In addition, with more and more adult children being faced with the challenge of caring for an aging parent, Savages presents a situation that many people can already relate to or realize that they may have to in the future. This film is definitely one that I would recommend to most movie enthusiasts, so go check it out next time you have a chance.
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