Review of The Savages (2007) by David M — 02 Dec 2009

Sad. Moving. Touching. True-to-life. The best way to describe this movie is a coming-of-middle-age story, I wish I'd coined the phrase, but its true. You see a lot of movies about people, well my age, learning what it means to be an adult. This movie is about that next transition, as it was put in Indiana Jones, "We're at the point in out lives when god stops giving us things, and starts taking them away.".

I guess you really don't realize what comes with middle age, the loss of your parents, and the realization that times is running out on those dreams you have for yourself. That what this movie plays out for you, and how sad of an experience it really is.

Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman create real people. This is brilliant acting, and fine performance. Their characters are not a combination of individual quirks built by actors, to create a hollow shell of a persona for screen, these are real people, not created to move the movie along, only to exist as themselves. Hoffman's character is a realist, he's a PHD in philosophy and teaches dramatic theatre at a local college. He's incredibly practical about the aging of his estranged father, and seems okay with his impending death, although you can almost see chinks in the armor, as you suspect there are deep wounds there from childhood. Linney's character is also a writer, she writes plays, unproduced, and is sleeping with a married man a decade older than her. She's emotional, high-strung, and vulnerable, but not cliche of a female character.

How do you deal with putting your parent in a nursing home? I've never really thought of what is going to happen to my parents when they get to be 80. They live 10 minutes from me, and I didn't even go see them on Thanksgiving. Will I even be as caring as these two, and go see them everyday? The movie will make you laugh and cry, its not melodramatic, and its not a light reproduction of real life. Its life presented in the best way, and its a wholly unique experience for me in film.