Perhaps two of the best performances of the careers of both Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, Doubt) and Laura Linney (The Squid and the Whale, You Can Count on Me) are on display in the most under-appreciated movie in 2007, Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) The Savages. This movie scored 89% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes yet amassed just $6.4 million at the box office. I did not see this movie in the theater. I remember hearing a lot about it, but I don’t remember seeing many trailers. And at the time, this wasn’t a movie that I thought would interest me. I am always a little lukewarm on films classified as drama and comedies. They are hit or miss for me. When they are right, they are great. But, for me, that seems to be the exception to the rule. I saw it only because it had such a high rating and because Linney earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance. No one recommended this movie to me. It was a movie I told myself I would sit through and probably not enjoy, based on the reasons I listed above. Boy, was I wrong. The Savages is a fantastic movie and hits close to home for most of us at some point in our lives.
As I mentioned, Hoffman and Linney have never been better, in my opinion. They played well off of each other. They played a middle-aged brother and sister dealing with an emotionally aging parent suffering from dementia. They are trying to come to terms with this, both in how to get him the proper care he needs and how this will affect their lives. They might have been portraying the most real-life characters they’ve ever represented.
Furthermore, they have to make a series of rash decisions when their father, Lenny (Philip Bosco – Hitch, The Money Pit), is kicked out of the planned retirement community home he was living in after his girlfriend dies. We quickly learn that Wendy (Linney) and Jon (Hoffman) have difficulty caring for themselves, let alone a sick parent. Much like my recently reviewed The Skeleton Twins, The Savages cuts into that hit-or-miss drama/comedy genre. And while this movie does have its funny moments, it is much more a drama than a comedy.
Wendy and Jon are left to decide what to do with Lenny after his retirement home forces him to leave. The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” best describes the siblings’ relationship with their father. He lives in Arizona while they live in New York (he in Buffalo, she in Manhattan), but Wendy and Jon don’t exactly have the closest relationship either. She is a truth-stretcher in the kindest sense of the word. She tells her brother about getting Guggenheim grants when, in fact, she is a failed freelance playwright. She holds a lot of resentment toward the world. Wendy’s moral compass seems altered as she engages in a dead-end affair with her neighbor Larry (Peter Friedman – Side Effects, Love and Other Drugs), a lustful married man she doesn’t care for. She’s a dreamer and is living a life that is nowhere close to her dreams. Likewise, Jon’s life isn’t full of bright rainbows. He’s overweight, has high cholesterol, and suffers from depression. He is a theater professor. He has a girlfriend whose travel visa in the United States is about to expire. She will have to leave the country unless the two of them get married. John loves her, but he won’t marry her because he doesn’t believe that he is emotionally sound enough to handle a relationship (case in point is when he cries each time she makes him eggs). Wendy and Jon aren’t lost causes, but they aren’t necessarily taking the proper steps to improve their lives.
The comedy in this movie is not particularly humorous. It’s quirky, black humor as much as it is uncomfortable humor. We are not envious of these characters. They aren’t thrilled in any sense of the word, and no, it’s not because they’ve just had a wrench thrown into their everyday lives. They are poorly educated in dealing with an aging parent and an aging parent in the early onset of dementia. Even worse than their lack of education is their lack of patience. Wendy and Jon are each hoping that the other takes on the brunt of the responsibility. However, each knows that this is an unrealistic expectation. So instead, like any other set of humans, they do their best in an imperfect situation. They look into nursing homes, trying to find the one that is the best fit for all the parties involved. There are uncomfortable situations throughout this movie. One involved Lenny’s pants falling on his way to the bathroom while on an airplane, which exposed his adult diaper to everyone aboard. Another is a conversation in which John and Wendy have to ask their father what his wishes are if a breathing machine is required to sustain life. While Lenny wasn’t exactly the greatest father in the world, Wendy and Jon know their responsibility as his children. And so they learn on the fly while slowly trying to savior their last days with him while also re-cultivating a relationship and trying to complement each other’s strengths and help one another with their struggles.
The movie feels real. Perhaps it feels a little too real. When I’ve explained the premise to a few people in their 50s and 60s, they said they had no interest in seeing it because they either are going through or have recently gone through a very similar situation with a parent. So they have no interest in watching that play out on the screen. And that makes total sense to me. It is unfortunate how a lot of us grow old. I think about my grandparents. I knew all four of mine plus one of my great-grandmothers very well. Of these five, I didn’t lose my first one until I was 15. He was my maternal grandfather, and he died in his sleep after suffering a heart attack. He was young (in his mid 60’s), and, at the time, I thought his death was the saddest. But then I saw how much the other four suffered from their health ailments, and I wondered if he got the best deal of all of them. My paternal grandfather lived to be 96 (30 years longer than my maternal one). He had a great life, but the last couple of years were brutal. But he was never really confined to a bed for extended periods. I wish I could say the same thing about my grandmothers. They suffered immensely at times.
Plot 9/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 10/10
Screenplay 9/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
89.5%
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