The Savages Review

Tamara Jenkins' small film The Savages, sounds like a terribly depressing affair on paper. A struggling playwright (Laura Linney) and a frumpy Bertol Brecht scholar (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), get the word that their father is suffering from dementia and needs to be taken care of, and they fly to Arizona to do so.

And there's plenty of depressing subtext as well- Hoffman's girlfriend is being deported back to Poland on an expired Visa, Linney is having a quiet, joyless affair with a married neighbor and temping to pay the bills while getting rejected for artistic fellowships.

But there's a warm side to this film, from its naturalistic cinematography and light humor, to the patient way that it lets its story unfold.

The last name of all three major characters is "Savage," and they're constantly at each others' throats- the father in particular (Phillip Bosco), is unlikeable and rough, and Jenkins never forces him to recant his ways or apologize for anything. In one scene, while his two children are at each others' throats arguing, he simply turns down his hearing aid and ignores them, lost in his own world at the end of his life.

These Savages are cleverly contrasted with a few pets that come in and out of the story, a dog and two cats, and the simplicity of connection is illuminated by them- we love animals unconditionally, and warmly, but our feelings about other human beings are complex and hurtful. In the end, we're all animals.

The Savages reminded me of a more humanistic Woody Allen film, because it shared a similar academic New York sensibility, but it never went too far making its characters unrealistically pithy or absurd. Sometimes the film relies a little too much on embarassment for humor (like when Linney tries to help her father to the bathroom on a plane and his pants falll down), which seems unecessary when life itself can be so funny in such a three-dimensional film.

I also got the feeling that it would have benefited from teling us more of the history involved with the three of them- we know that the mother left, and the father was not really up to the task, but we get only glimpses of the childhood that's left so many marks on the two siblings.

Overall, it's a great character study, and a winning film.

When to See It: Before it Leaves theaters.

Lefotver thoughts:

• This doesn't quite puch anything off the 2007 top 20, but it's definitely top 30 material.
• Has there ever been a movie where an affair with a married man is a good idea? The longer they strung that sub plot out, the more annoying it became.
• Some really surreal shots of Sun City, AZ in the opening of this film- I don't if they made it this way or it is this way, but it appeares like a suburban fantasia for the elderly full of golf-carts on the street, water aerobics, and happy-faced mailpeople riding old fashioned bikes.
• Glad to see Laura Linney get an Oscar nomination, but Hoffman was just as good.
• Linney's cat was named "Genghis."