Jon and Wendy Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney) are brother and sister. 42 and 39 years old and neither is married. He can't manage to marry his girlfriend of 3 years who's about to be deported and she's having an affair with an older married man. He has a PhD in theater and teaches in Buffalo while working on a book on Bertolt Brecht. She lives in New York and works as a temp while writing plays that no one publishes. They're in middle age and haven't grown up yet. He's retreated from all of his emotions and she seems to be unsuccessfully dealing with depression with pills, exercise and repeating the same mistakes. Given it's both brother and sister and you'd guess that perhaps there were family issues. Well those are about to come up to.
The Savages opens with, their father Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco) living in Sun City, AZ. There's literally (rather disgusting) writing on the walls that indicate that dementia has set in. Soon Jon and Wendy fly out there to deal with it and then deal with that modern marvel, the nursing home, and all the guilt that goes with it. Jon is intellectualizing it all, neither of them is going to take care of him and he needs help, what other choice is there? Wendy believes they are horrible people for what they are doing. They argue and fight and deal with the situation and don't talk about themselves too much.
I had two problems with the film. First of all, for kids who barely know their father, they didn't even know where he lived, they don't just put him in a nursing home and forget them (which only might actually make them horrible people) they visit him all the time. The film's timeframe isn't always clear but Wendy seemingly moves in with her brother for several weeks. This is not how horrible people neglect their father whom they have no relationship with.
Second, we never get the back story of any of the characters. There are things hinted at but nothing explained. I assume the point is that it doesn't matter, there are many things that could have done this to these people. The story is not sentimental at all. There are no youthful senior citizens in uplifting scenes. Though for all the realism, I remained pretty detached to Lenny's plight, I think for several reasons. We aren't shown Lenny before the dementia and Jon and Wendy didn't have a good (or even any) relationship with him and it seemed they had mostly bad memories of him. Given he was a bad father, there wasn't much of a reason (over basic humanity) for him to win my sympathy.
I also thought many scenes ended early after just suggesting their point. It's embarrassing to have your pants fall down revealing your adult diapers. It's more so having to stand there while your daughter has to pull them up for you and you have to continue walking passed all the witnesses. The camera lingered in other scenes, such as showing an empty room, but not where I would have. If modern comedy is about making people squirm, shouldn't embarrassing scenes do the same? Jon gets a call while teaching a class, we know it's about his father but not more detail. He's visibly upset and a student asks a question. We don't see how Jon reacts. Does he take a moment? Leave the room? Repress it all and move on?
There are some neat allusions. Jon presents to his class the differences between dramatic presentation and Brecht's epic theater. The differences, e.g., emotion v intellectual, are obviously differences between Wendy and Jon. One review mentioned that Peter Pan, a story about a boy who "won't grow up", has brother and sister characters John and Wendy Darling. But I want more than mere allusion.
I won't give away the ending but I found it rather predictable, probably deliberately so. This film is not about suspense or sentimentality, instead this is a character study of damaged people unable to get on with their own lives as their father is facing the end of his. Hoffman and Linney are (of course) extraordinary in their roles, so is Bosco. All three could get Oscar nominations. I'd be shocked if Linney doesn't get one and Hoffman will get at least one for his roles this year. In the end I wanted more from this film. It seemed most of the revelations any of these characters had, happened off screen. If you're going to be a character study, study the characters in some depth.
Between this and Away From Her this was the year of caring for the elderly with dementia. The Savages is worth seeing for the performances, but Away From Her is the better film.
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