Savage

Some movies we watch to make us feel better, to feel joy, fear, hope. Some movies we just watch to make us feel. The Savages, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, does just that.

Adult siblings Wendy (Laura Linney) and Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) find themselves faced with the difficult task of caring for their estranged and aging father.

The last thing the two Savage siblings ever wanted to do was look back at their difficult family history. Having wriggled their way out from beneath their father’s domineering thumb, they are now firmly cocooned in their own complicated lives. Wendy is a struggling East Village playwright, AKA a temp who spends her days applying for grants, stealing office supplies and dating her very married neighbor. Jon is a neurotic college professor writing books on obscure subjects in Buffalo.

Then comes the call that informs them that the father they have long feared and avoided, Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco), is slowly being consumed by dementia and they are the only ones that can help. Now, as they put their already arrested lives on hold, Wendy and Jon are forced to live together under one roof for the first time since childhood, rediscovering the eccentricities that drove each other crazy. Faced with complete upheaval and battling over how to handle their father’s final days, they are confronted with what adulthood, family and, most surprisingly, each other are really about.

With lovably flawed characters, the film relied heavily upon powerful performances by an incomparable cast and strong writing to weave a dryly realistic story of family, love and mortality.

It made me cry, a little. Laugh, a lot. More than anything else, though, it made me think. It made me feel.


Tag: Movies