Post by rdywenur on Jan 1, 2008 18:58:22 GMT -7
'Savages' gives insight into age, hard choices
By ROGER EBERT
Universal Press Syndicate
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
"The Savages" seems a curious movie to be opening on Christmas day,
but maybe not: Christmas Day itself is said to be the top movie-going
day of the year, as families (a) seek something they can do together
without having to talk, or (b) use them as an excuse to escape from
the house. Not all holidays are by Norman Rockwell, and maybe some
grown children will enjoy this touching, humorous film about an
elderly father whose time has come to leave his "retirement
community" and move into "assisted living" (which my Aunt Mary
referred to as "assisted dying").
Wendy and Jon Savage (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) are
sister and brother, she living in New York City, he living in
Buffalo, she an aspiring playwright, he a professor and author of
books about the theater. They are smart, articulate and knowledgeable
about drama, attributes which do them no good at all when they get a
call from Sun City that their dad, Lenny (Philip Bosco), has started
to write on the wall with his excrement.
After some reluctance, mostly on Jon's part, they fly to Arizona and
find their dad shacked up with Doris, a girlfriend his age. I was
reminded of a friend of mine whose 85-year-old dad discovered Viagra
and insisted on calling his son with daily reports on his sex life.
My friend pleaded with him to spare the details. There are some
things children desperately do not want to know. Doris spares them
the occasion for such reports, however, by suddenly passing away, and
Jon and Wendy decide to move their father to Buffalo, so he will be
close to them. He is a hostile curmudgeon who probably moved to
Arizona in the first place to get away from them, but now he's in no
position to resist.
Writer-director Tamara Jenkins ("Slums of Beverly Hills") doesn't
sentimentalize this material; quite the opposite. Lenny remains Lenny
to the best of his ability, which means a short temper, a foul
vocabulary and a constant state of irritation. We gather that he was
not a joy to grow up with; indeed, the scars still borne by his
children are such that they refer to their childhoods only obliquely.
Whatever the relationship between their parents was like, it has left
them unable to form liaisons of their own; Wendy is having a joyless
affair with a married man, and Jon has a Polish girlfriend he refuses
to marry even if it would save her from deportation back to Poland.
That he weeps over his inability shows that he is aware of his
emotional scars and fears to heal them.
There is a genre of movies set in old-folks' homes that resemble
sitcoms, including colorful characters, lots of one-liners and a
pecking order. The nursing home they find for Lenny in Buffalo is the
next step after such a place. It is essentially run by the
caregivers, who treat their clients something like misbehaved
children. One who seems to care is a Nigerian immigrant named Jimmy
(Gbenga Akinnagbe), who sympathizes with Jon and Wendy and shares
lore about caring for the aged. Kristen Thomson played a similar
character in Sarah Polley's "Away From Her" -- the experienced nurse
who knows what the family has gone through and will go through.
A movie like this depends on nuance and performance if it is not to
descend entirely into soap opera. Jenkins knows that and is quietly
insistent that we observe little moments and dropped words and
exchanged glances. The resettling of Jon and Wendy's father causes
the resettling of their own lives and forces them to examine memories
they hoped were buried. Both Linney and Hoffman are so specific in
creating these characters that we see them as people, not elements in
a plot. Hoffman in particular shows how many disguises he has within
his seemingly immutable presence; would you know it is the same actor
here and in two other films this season, "Before the Devil Knows
You're Dead" and "Charlie Wilson's War"?
"The Savages" confronts a day that may come in all of our lives. Two
days, actually: the first when we are younger, the second when we are
older. "Ballad of Narayama," a great Japanese film, is about a
community that decides when a person has outlived any usefulness and
leaves that person on the mountain to die. It seems cruel, but even
the dying seem to think it appropriate. Better than to have been
healthy and strong once, and reduced to writing on the walls.
Great movie and we can lay claim to PSH who is from Fairport a suburb of Rochester, NY
By ROGER EBERT
Universal Press Syndicate
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
"The Savages" seems a curious movie to be opening on Christmas day,
but maybe not: Christmas Day itself is said to be the top movie-going
day of the year, as families (a) seek something they can do together
without having to talk, or (b) use them as an excuse to escape from
the house. Not all holidays are by Norman Rockwell, and maybe some
grown children will enjoy this touching, humorous film about an
elderly father whose time has come to leave his "retirement
community" and move into "assisted living" (which my Aunt Mary
referred to as "assisted dying").
Wendy and Jon Savage (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) are
sister and brother, she living in New York City, he living in
Buffalo, she an aspiring playwright, he a professor and author of
books about the theater. They are smart, articulate and knowledgeable
about drama, attributes which do them no good at all when they get a
call from Sun City that their dad, Lenny (Philip Bosco), has started
to write on the wall with his excrement.
After some reluctance, mostly on Jon's part, they fly to Arizona and
find their dad shacked up with Doris, a girlfriend his age. I was
reminded of a friend of mine whose 85-year-old dad discovered Viagra
and insisted on calling his son with daily reports on his sex life.
My friend pleaded with him to spare the details. There are some
things children desperately do not want to know. Doris spares them
the occasion for such reports, however, by suddenly passing away, and
Jon and Wendy decide to move their father to Buffalo, so he will be
close to them. He is a hostile curmudgeon who probably moved to
Arizona in the first place to get away from them, but now he's in no
position to resist.
Writer-director Tamara Jenkins ("Slums of Beverly Hills") doesn't
sentimentalize this material; quite the opposite. Lenny remains Lenny
to the best of his ability, which means a short temper, a foul
vocabulary and a constant state of irritation. We gather that he was
not a joy to grow up with; indeed, the scars still borne by his
children are such that they refer to their childhoods only obliquely.
Whatever the relationship between their parents was like, it has left
them unable to form liaisons of their own; Wendy is having a joyless
affair with a married man, and Jon has a Polish girlfriend he refuses
to marry even if it would save her from deportation back to Poland.
That he weeps over his inability shows that he is aware of his
emotional scars and fears to heal them.
There is a genre of movies set in old-folks' homes that resemble
sitcoms, including colorful characters, lots of one-liners and a
pecking order. The nursing home they find for Lenny in Buffalo is the
next step after such a place. It is essentially run by the
caregivers, who treat their clients something like misbehaved
children. One who seems to care is a Nigerian immigrant named Jimmy
(Gbenga Akinnagbe), who sympathizes with Jon and Wendy and shares
lore about caring for the aged. Kristen Thomson played a similar
character in Sarah Polley's "Away From Her" -- the experienced nurse
who knows what the family has gone through and will go through.
A movie like this depends on nuance and performance if it is not to
descend entirely into soap opera. Jenkins knows that and is quietly
insistent that we observe little moments and dropped words and
exchanged glances. The resettling of Jon and Wendy's father causes
the resettling of their own lives and forces them to examine memories
they hoped were buried. Both Linney and Hoffman are so specific in
creating these characters that we see them as people, not elements in
a plot. Hoffman in particular shows how many disguises he has within
his seemingly immutable presence; would you know it is the same actor
here and in two other films this season, "Before the Devil Knows
You're Dead" and "Charlie Wilson's War"?
"The Savages" confronts a day that may come in all of our lives. Two
days, actually: the first when we are younger, the second when we are
older. "Ballad of Narayama," a great Japanese film, is about a
community that decides when a person has outlived any usefulness and
leaves that person on the mountain to die. It seems cruel, but even
the dying seem to think it appropriate. Better than to have been
healthy and strong once, and reduced to writing on the walls.
Great movie and we can lay claim to PSH who is from Fairport a suburb of Rochester, NY
