I really enjoyed ‘The Savages’ , written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. You can tell it’s an independent movie because it deals with death in an intelligent way without resorting to cheap sentiment.
This quite an achievement because the family centred storyline has plenty of potential for mawkish clichès. An estranged son and daughter have to decide what to do with their dying father.
The movie is simply a humane and honest study of ordinary characters faced with mundane but emotional stressful choices. It centres mainly on Wendy Savage (Laura Linney) and her brother Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) made believable by the brilliance of these two actors.
They are two flawed and fragile personalities who try to put on a front of being in control and successful but really flailing around trying to get their lives on track.
The absence of parental guidance is a key theme coupled with strong hints of the father physically abused them when they were children. The full extent of this violence is not spelled out and the father (Philip Bosco), suffering from dementia, is portrayed a tough character but far from being a monster.
These are normal disfunctional lives and my admiration for Philip Seymour Hoffman grows with every film I see of his. He’s one of those actors that seems so natural in the varied roles he chooses.
He is particularly gifted at showing a kind of dignified vulnerabilty and one of those few actors who convince you that it takes a special strength for men to cry in public and he’s a great role model to prove that the damage to be done by indoctrinating kids with the ‘boy’s don’t cry’ message.
Hollywood would have made a pig’s ear of this storyline. I feel sure, for example, that they would have set up some over the top death bed scene. Here he passes away while the son and daughter are sleeping. “Is that it?” asks Wendy. “Yes”, replies Jon.
Sometimes, death, like life, can be painfully banal.
