REVIEW -- The Savages

Dementia, an extra-marital affair, a bad childhood, a struggling relationship and death. Hilarious. “The Savages” takes a realistic and awkwardly funny look at dealing with any form of death.

Laura Linney plays Wendy Savage, a neurotic and struggling playwright who spends her days stealing office supplies at her temp job and writing grant proposals so she can write a play about her horrible childhood. She also has a lackluster affair with a married man. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays her brother, Jon Savage, a college professor living in Buffalo, N.Y. with a failing relationship to a Polish woman. The two siblings are brought together when their father, played by Philip Bosco, begins showing signs of dementia.

The film is seriously funny in that it will cause guffawing laughter at points, but also because it finds the truth behind the humor. Writer/director Tamara Jenkins, known for her 1998 film “The Slums of Beverly Hills,” knows when to enlighten and when to bring ambiguity onto the screen. We are never fully told the childhood events of the siblings, but we see the effects. Understanding is gained through the insecurities, betrayals and poignancy of the characters’ actions.

Every actor is at the top of their game in this film. Linney is endearing even when her actions are annoying. Hoffman conveys so much with his eyes, the movie could be seen muted and audiences would still laugh and cry along with him. Bosco is wonderful. He does not give in to the stereotypical way of playing a senile old man. Although it is a family drama and there have been a billion others before, this film makes everything fresh and new.

There is so much “The Savages” gets right, particularly the interactions among estranged family members. The siblings are blunt and devoid of social niceties toward each other. They are also guarded in their personal lives, but curious about the other sibling’s secrets.

There is a wonderful motif of watching the world from a car window. Every character has a moment where they stare at the passing trees while reflecting on their personal situations. As the seasons change and winter approaches, these moments show the gradual decline of life in the trees and in the characters’ lives.

In a particularly exceptional scene, Wendy is angry with Jon for putting their father in a sub-par nursing home, so she tries to get Lenny into a nicer and prettier facility. Jon fires back with the idea that these nicer facilities are only there to mask the truth about death. Death is disturbing and horrible and there is no way around it.

Every character is dealing with death in some way. Wendy is, in a way, already dead. She is unresponsive to her lover and numb from all the Percocet and anti-depressants she takes. Lenny, the father, is mentally dead from the dementia. Jon cuts off his emotions from his failed relationship and from the news about his father. It isn’t until the siblings come together that they start coming alive. They battle each other mentally with their conflicting emotions. The Savages begin to challenge their lives and their emotional deaths.

In its depiction of death, “The Savages” shrewdly manages to be funny, realistic and thought provoking. It finds hope in unlikely places and takes the family drama genre to a new level. This film is pitch perfect.

By Tandy Versyp
Staff Writer, District