The Saveges (R)

by Suzanne Baran
26 March 2008

One of the best films of 2007 is an underrated gem called THE SAVAGES.

It’s TAMARA JENKINS’s second feature film after Slums of Beverly Hills. It tells the tale of a gruff encounter with life, aging, and death with unparalleled humanity, savvy, and humor. PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN and LAURA LINNEY play a brother and sister shoved into caring for the father who neglected them and is now diagnosed with dementia.

This propels the siblings into facing their childhood demons and moving beyond them to care for their ailing father. Hoffman’s character, Jon, is 42, Linney’s, Wendy, is 39—both siblings have crossed into middle age without really noticing it. They live in a state of arrested emotional development alluding to serious childhood trauma. It may not be qualified as tragic, but it’s substantial because there’s a constant underlying current nestled in the background of the humdrum of their daily lives.

Hoffman and Linney are not only credible and believable as siblings but as siblings who have survived their mother’s abandonment and their father’s abuse. They both share a dark-humored, snarky approach to life and an eminently evolved sense of the absurd. I’m reminded of my own awkward sibling moments where facing the past and dealing with traumatic childhood memories is done with varying degrees of intensity. Many unspoken words seem to be uttered by their body language alone. They identify with the pain and its life-long consumption, but cannot seem to make peace with it.

Wendy works overtime to avoid and often escape the dreary nature of her life while Jon refuses to tap into his emotional side, and breaks up with his girlfriend whose Visa is about to expire. He watches her leave, sending his pragmatic side into a tailspin—it’s incompatible to how he feels emotionally. One brilliant scene illustrates this. His girlfriend cooks eggs for breakfast and he cries after she serves him.

Meanwhile, Wendy is stuck in pause. She’s having an affair with a 52-year-old married man who cannot please her sexually, and has too many issues of his own to properly be present. Wendy is also riddled with guilt at having put her father in a home in upstate New York at the height of winter’s dismal season, in an equally dreary place. She attempts to change homes only to discover her father’s disease is too far along for him to be accepted into the ritzier home. It’s in this scene that Hoffman makes a profoundly simple statement: “Right inside that building, people are dying. It’s a horror show.” His character bellows this as an elderly resident is pushed in a wheelchair nearby.

My mother and aunt are faced with the same challenge. Their mother became a widow and was diagnosed with dementia, and is in the last phase of Alzheimer’s. She receives care from two nurses at her two-bedroom apartment. Like the father portrayed in the film, abuse begets abuse. Both the father and my grandmother were abused by their parents and then abused their children and this trickled down to me and my siblings, too.

Though my mom and aunt have hired help, they are extremely involved in my grandmother’s care. They buy all of her groceries, refill prescriptions, pay her bills, take her out to doctors’ appointments, sleep at her place on weekends, worry constantly about her, and try to manage the nurses. One got locked out of the apartment and my grandmother was left outside with the caretaker for a few hours in the cold.

The guilt associated with caring for an aging parent is long-lived. No matter how much is sacrificed to care for them, it’s never enough. Making an elder’s last years pleasurable can suck the life out of anyone. When the phone call comes from a nursing home, nurse, or caretaker—the call that ends it all—it leaves an emptiness that can’t be filled. Even after that parent is long gone, guilt remains.

The film delves into these issues with piercing honesty, humility, and humor. The differing ways of perceiving and dealing with the world are small lingering details in the backdrop of a film that creeps up on you and leaves an indelible impression. The way this masterpiece mirrors and imitates life—and how it treats a worthy yet unpopular theme in this youth-driven society—is truly a cinematic feat.

Musically, the film offers opulent tunes as a soundtrack. THE KINKS’ “Sitting by The Riverside” and THE VELVET UNDERGROUND’s “I’m Sticking With You” are just some standout tracks that compliment the film. Another hidden gem is LOTTE LENYA’s “Solomon Song,” sung by Hoffman during a captivating scene, bestowing on it a serene melancholic victory.

Filed under film indie