Superbly directed by Tamara Jenkins, who also wrote the film’s brilliantly quirky script, The Savages is flat out one of the best comedic dramas to down the pipe in a long, long time.
The premise is simple: two siblings with a mild rivalry suddenly find they have to take care of their father, who’s been diagnosed with dementia. When Wendy Savage (Laura Linney) gets a message saying her father has been getting out of hand, she phones Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman), waking him from a dead sleep, and tells him point blank, “Jon, it’s me. Dad is writing on the walls with shit.”
Jenkins’ Screenplay
The script is brilliant not only because it’s funny and touching and drop-dead serious all at the same time, but because it manages that triple feat without collapsing under its own weight. Jenkins doesn’t confuse shtick with comedy, nor maudlin sentiment with true emotion (except for a few moments where she wants to, using it for bitter-sweet comedic effect).
The film deals with real human problems and foibles, the kind that everyone, in one way or another, is a cause, victim or witness of. The “savages” in the title could just as easily refer to the savageness of daily living as to the family’s last name.
In one of the films many poignantly comical moments, Wendy, hardly proud of the way she and Jon are treating their father, breaks down saying, “We’re horrible, horrible, horrible people. Horrible.”
Themes: Dramatic Theatre vs. Theatre of the Absurd
Wendy has her own life to live, a struggling playwright getting by on temp work, juggling a dysfunctional romance with a married man. Jon’s life is no less complicated: a college professor working on a thesis on Bertolt Brecht, who can’t commit to a Polish girlfriend who’s leaving the country.
When Wendy flops down on Jon’s couch at one point, she discovers a copy of Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd, which makes an ironically apt epithet for the Savages’ current situation and lifestyles.
What isn’t overtly explained in the movie—and so never comes off as pretentious philosophy—is the idea that Absurdist theatre, of which Brecht was a precursor, thematically explores the notion that life is essentially without meaning. In one scene, Jon tries to point out the dichotomy between absurdist and dramatic theatre to his class by explaining that dramatic theatre relies on emotional response, while absurdism is a thinking man’s game.
This brings to mind Horace Walpole’s famous quote, “The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.” Except that in many ways, Jon, with his cerebral take on life, seems a more tragic character than his patchwork quilt of a sister who clings to emotion so much that she’s willing to fib if it makes for a better story, and willing to create the meaning that may otherwise be missing from life. (Compare this, for sharp contrast, with the hopeless nihilism in No Country for Old Men.)
The acting is strong all around. Both Linney and Hoffman turn in some of their finer work, fully worthy of awards consideration, and Philip Bosco, who plays their father, Lenny Savage, is wonderful.
It’s hard, in fact, to think of a weak spot in this film. The beauty is that everything works in concert to the point that it all steps out of the way, giving free rein to the themes Jenkins wants to deal with. It’s a solid contender, at the very least, for the year’s top ten list.
- Grade: A+
- Rating: R
- Running Time: 113 min.
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