La famille Savage

This is a great movie, but pay no attention to the DVD packaging calling it "darkly funny", "singularly funny" and so on. While it does have a few good gags that made me laugh out loud once or twice, it's only about 25% comedy and the rest is a heavy, emotional drama about the painful subject of slow, lingering death.

Two siblings (played by Laura Linney & Philip Seymour Hoffman) are burdened with the task of taking care of their estranged father who they learn is suffering from dementia. The comedy is just enough to keep it from getting too depressing but not so much that it upstages the gravity of the situation.

The pacing is appropriately slow. You'll find no car chases, shootouts, contrived romances or M-Night-Shyamalanian twists; the story is not even very significant. Instead, pay attention to the relationships between the characters, their emotional disconnection from each other & the world, and their efforts to confront their lack of intimacy. What's interesting about this movie is that it begins with no details about the characters, but slowly the past emerges and is only fully explained in the final scene.

If you like movies about real life, I think you'll enjoy this. And if you're interested in films about families/people dealing with illnesses & disorders, also check out "Away From Her", "Autumn Hearts", and "Phoebe in Wonderland" ...all good movies without the standard Hollywood cheese.

The Savages (2007) was written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. Jenkins gets everything right in this film about three family members who barely connect with each other. Laura Linney plays Wendy Savage--a NYC playwright who works as a temp and waits for an artistic breakthrough. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays her brother Jon, who teaches drama at a college in Buffalo. Although the siblings aren't particularly hostile towards each other, they clearly don't have a close or affectionate relationship.

A health crisis makes it necessary for the two to travel to Sun City, Arizona, to care for their father. We only see Lenny Savage as an old man with dementia. He's not exactly a warm and loving person as the film opens. Moreover, we learn that he wasn't a great parent before the dementia, either. Both his son and his daughter don't keep in touch with him, nor he with them. Now they have to deal with a crisis that forces them together.

Hoffman and Linney are two of he finest actors on the screen today, and, when they play off against each other, the result is movie magic. Everything rings true--their love/hate relationship, their professional jealousy, and their disapproval of each other's love life. They aren't exactly the two people best suited to make life and death decisions about their father, but that's the reality they face, and they have to deal with it as best they can.

I've written almost 200 reviews for IMDb, and I've never even considered mentioning the casting director. This review is the exception. My compliments to Jeanne McCarthy, who has filled this movie with an extraordinary set of actors in small roles. Everyone Wendy and Jon meet looks right for the role--nurses, psychologists, administrators, aides, students, etc., etc. It would be worth seeing the movie again just to watch the actors who aren't stars.

There's also an excellent supporting actor. Peter Friedman plays Larry, the married man with whom Wendy is having an affair. Their scene in a motel room is short but both powerful and poignant. (Actually, every scene in which Linney appears is powerful and poignant, but Friedman holds his own in this one.)

We saw the movie in a theater, but an intimate film of this type should do well on DVD. Incidentally, most of the movie takes place in Buffalo, New York, and director Jenkins obviously has a real feel for the city and its people.

This may be the best independent film of 2007. Don't miss it!

This film, along with "Away from Her" are the best elder-films I've seen all year (2007).

There is an honesty to the movie about a brother and sister relationship that is genuine and heart warming. Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jon, the professor) and Laura Linney (as Wendy, aspiring playwright)are perfectly cast in the roles of the sister and brother who have to deal with their obnoxious, foul-mouthed elderly father, Lenny, played by Philip Bosco in a riveting performance.

Their childhoods have been difficult, abuse is hinted at along with a runaway mother. They are now confronted with the care and responsibility of their father who has been deemed incompetent (and penniless). The effects of their childhood on these now adult children is played out well. They are incapable of intimacy with potential partners and even with each other.

How they slowly gain an understanding of themselves and each other is an ongoing major thread of the movie and is beautifully depicted. A one of a kind sibling movie. 9 out of 10. Recommended.

To put it simply, "The Savages" is the most human look at life I've seen in theaters this year. It's incredibly easy to relate to if you have ever ever seen some relative or family friend of yours get old and then forget who you are due to some sort of elder person's disease. It features three of the year's finest performances from Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Phillip Brosco, all of whom radiate on the screen as real, ordinary but complex, people. Linney and Hoffman play brother and sister, two writers who have an argumentative but loving way of getting along. Brosco plays their father, who has done something really, well, "dirty," and has drawn the attention of the family that had been caring for him, who no longer wish to do so.

From there, Linney and Hoffman's characters meet up with the father whom they haven't seen in years, and who was never very compassionate towards them. However, their father has dementia, and slowly begins to forget who they are. Instead of their main concern being whether or not he's kind to them, the kids are afraid they won't be able to communicate with him at all. The way Tamara Jenkins handles this, from both the perspective of the kids and the perspective of the father, is brilliant. She really understands the way family relations work, as her film is spot-on in that aspect.

The three performances are all great for their own reasons. Linney plays a woman who is really confused with her life: she's having an affair with a married man who's ten years older than her, she lies to everyone she knows about things that aren't worth it, and she is having a lot of trouble getting produced as a writer. Hoffman, her older brother, has a really relaxed humanistic side to him, always countering Linney's loud worrisome actions with a calm, mind-processing technique. The chemistry between this brother-sister duo - probably the only opposite-sex-adult-aged-duo that doesn't have any romantic elements (for obvious reasons) - is one of the most realistic works of chemistry you'll find in a theater this year. Throw in Phillip Brosco - who absolutely conquers the dementia that his character has (my aunt has dementia, so I see her all the time and know that his face and way of talking and mannerisms are all spot on) - and you've got three characters who are so strong alone that they're enough reason to see this movie, funny-touching script and story aside.

While all three performances were incredible, I'd have to say that my favorite performance came from Hoffman. Linney played the confused-wreck card very well, but it's not like she's the first actress to confront or conquer that territory. Brosco was astoundingly realistic as a man with dementia, but his role doesn't carry very far beyond that. Hoffman's performance, while not "loud" in any way, is simply the best portrayal of an ordinary human being I've seen in years, if that makes any sense. Everything, from the way he reacts to what people say, to the way he talks, to the way he expresses emotion when he's feeling it - all of it is executed so well that I can't believe that he was actually acting.

The ending of the film is very humane. It doesn't have any major twists or bangs, but it doesn't end on a nothing-note either. It teaches us that the lessons we learn from one experience can help us deal with the next, and it's the many small messages like this and the very life-like feel of the film's craft that make it one of the most special films I had the experience of seeing at a theater this year.

"The Savages" has been terribly mismarketed. I'm sure plenty of people who went to watch it having seen only the previews, thought it was a comedy, and were disappointed. If anything, this is a "dramedy" - it will make you smile a few times, but never laugh out loud. But that's not a bad thing, the other way around.

This is a story about two siblings, Wendy (Laura Linney, who earned a surprise - and much deserved - Oscar nomination for this performance) and Jon Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who have to take care of their ailing, estranged father, Lenny (Philip Bosco). Fathers and kids relationships have been discussed in tons of movies, but Tamara Jenkins (real life wife of Jim Taylor, co-author of Alexander Payne's scripts - they both produced this movie, by the way) managed to create something fresh and beautiful in its own simplicity (and, at the same time, so complex and painfully real, for all of those who've had difficult family relationships - and who hasn't?). "The Savages" reminds me of Noah Baumbach's "The Squid and the Whale", also starring Laura Linney - but with a little less humor, and perhaps even more heart. Hoffman and Bosco are also great, as usual. Jenkins proves that she's a very sensitive writer/director, and I'm excited to check whatever she does next. I'm rooting for either her or Diablo Cody ("Juno") to win the Oscar for best original screenplay next month (coincidentally, both movies have The Velvet Underground's "I'm Sticking With You" in the soundtrack). 10/10.