Cast: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Director: Tamara Jenkins

Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins

Genre: Indie Drama

Running time: 1 hr 53 mins


CRITIQUE:


When one thinks of an indie film, chances are a dysfunctional family film is mentioned. Hot buttons are LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and the recent JUNO (although a teenage pregnancy film, it still has family issues flowing in its undercurrents), and they seem to have wholly created a new sub-genre on its own. Despite the abundance of that lately, some seemed to have entirely ignored another American dysfunctional family indie film in the same year a teenager named Juno McGuff became impregnated. THE SAVAGES, a quieter, humbler yet oozing with dignity, is a surprisingly rich film in terms of pathos, quirkiness, and poignancy content. This story of two siblings, forced to return to their roots in the event of the senility and dementia of their father, is witty, often funny, and mostly deep,entirely human narrative. While this was tagged to be a comedy, laughs rarely come, but when they do, they don’t feel pretentious or forced – they feel natural, real and touching.


This is Tamara Jenkins’s take on familial obligations, where after the fathers raise their sons and daughters to grow up as mature individuals, the former, before “popping up their clogs”, tend to end up in elderly homes in the care of other people. The writer/director tackles serious and dark issues of ageing, family dilemmas, childhood crises, and death with such sensibility and without any pretence. Instead she slaps us across the face with cold, hard, bitter truths that unfolds in the eyes of the two lead characters, John (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Wendy (Laura Linney), and along the scenes that are shown, often harbouring a sense of humour but succinctly aligns to the foibles of life.
Both are thirty-fortysomething siblings, and whilst they try to reconnect, they both struggle to pin down the truth of their fathers closeness to mortality. Hence, forcing them to consider the choice of nursing homes. It is in this decision that these characters tend to become ashamed and guilty of their doings, and Wendy cries that they are “so horrible”. That scene where John rages on Wendy about nursing homes in the car park being surrounded by gardens and sceneries which is to basically cover the grimness of people dying inside the building is a powerful scene to watch.


Which brings us to the almost compelling, amazingly nuanced performances of these two actors, Hoffman and Linney, which are both at the top of their games. Both of them, which presumably belong to the elite acting department whose career choices involves either an Oscar statuette or a nomination, epitomised their characters with such careful precision. Hoffman plays John as an offbeat character, a theatre professor who never gets the chance to make it big, while Linney plays Wendy, a messed-up woman trying to convince herself that everything is going to be alright, while being a sideline to a married man and a failure in play-writing. The weaknesses of these characters are necessities to lay bare their imperfections in a world that forces them to be upright.


VERDICT:

A tad humorous film which looks at unsmiling family issues, yet THE SAVAGES is as real and as bitter as the pill you swallow: it’s difficult but a necessity. It finds humour in the darkest of situations, but it is never tactless, and borders on the profound, poignant, and very human territory, which is called life.



RATING: A-