Review of The Savages (2007) by Chads. — 06 Feb 2008

If Jon(Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Wendy(Laura Linney) Savage weren't academics from opposite spectrums in the English profession, a harmless comment like, "Where is it?" pertaining to a couch obscured by clutter, would pass by unnoticed.

It would just simply be the case of a sister making an offhanded comment to her messy brother. But because they are, this remark is actually quite loaded. She's jealous. She helps move his books out of hostility.

Wendy is a creative writer(she has a M.F.A.), while Jon has a background in comparative literature. An ordinary person may dabble in playwriting, but nobody(no sane person) dabbles in English theory; so it goes that Jon is the intellectual heavyweight.

Jon may love his baby sister, but familial ties can only soften, not eliminate, his ostentatious disposition towards people on the other side of the English divide. Look closely at what Jon does in his classroom with that piece of chalk.

He's effectively tearing Wendy's craft apart, limb from limb with a single flat line. In another scene, Wendy says, "It's like we don't exist," when she and Jon leave their father's retirement home.

This remark, on a deeper level, refers to French literary critic Roland Barthes' essay, "Death of the Author", which encourages the reader to "separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate it from interpretive tyranny.

" Applied to a film about angry children who blame their father(Phillip Bosco) for an array of dysfunctionalities, "The Savages" doesn't necessarily side with Jon and Wendy. Maybe a post-structuralist would tell the Savage children to get over themselves and grow up.