Walrus Comix DVD Review
The Savages

Family dynamics are often such that black humor readily supplants sentimentality as the most potent modus operandi for sanity retention. In Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages, two generations of a fractured family collide amidst the obstacles specific to their timeline as unfulfilled midlife ennui stares into the abyss of imminent senility. Such a premise might not sound rife with comedic opportunities, but in the hands of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, the film utilizes its genuine if dark appreciation for humor to more effectively ground the undercurrents of pathos and anger that frequently bubble to the surface. The Savages is noteworthy in that it manages to traverse emotional minefields without focusing too much on the inevitable carnage inherent to most familial examinations, and Jenkins, working from a smart script she authored, very wisely allows two actors in their prime in Hoffman and Linney to assume most of the heavy lifting in paying due diligence to the range of emotions they encounter.

Linney and Hoffman play estranged siblings who are brought together as their father faces the prospect of dementia at the hands of advanced Parkinson’s disease. Among the Savage clan, estrangement seems to be a primary tradition, as the pair has also endured a long-standing separation from their once abusive father, who has forsaken his brood in their native New York for the warmer climes of Arizona. Hoffman plays the academic elder brother who emerges as a theater teacher seemingly incapable of finishing a long-planned book on the works of Bertold Brecht. His deadpan, glass half-empty worldview is held within an appropriately shabby professorial exterior (witness his lament/declaration “I’ve put on some weight”), and his inability to finish his literary work is mirrored by his inability to sustain a relationship with a Polish girlfriend whose work visa is about to lapse. Hoffman’s Jon exists in a pedantic cocoon of his own making, as his stunted emotional growth manifests itself in a kind of suspended graduate work animation. His reactions and prognoses for both his father’s plight and his flagging romance point to a man who has the intellectual ability to process emotions without possessing the wherewithal to fully engage them. Linney’s character checks in at the other end of the spectrum, as her Wendy meanders through the drudgery of her menial temp job existence with an unwavering insistence on dreaming of finding fulfillment as a playwright. She’s pieced together a semiautobiographical tome that envelops the dysfunction practiced in her childhood home, and she’s willing to go to brutally (read: hilariously) distasteful extremes to find funding for her work. Her personal life is similarly out of sync, as her closest companions come in the form of a cat and the classically unattainable married man who’s loathe to commit to becoming more than carnal window dressing. Wendy wears her scars differently than her brother, as she still clings to some semblance of nuclear normalcy and seeks to provide a comfortable and dignified ending chapter for a man who does not deserve her devotion.

Linney and Hoffman are captivating enough as single performers, as they have grown into two of modern cinema’s most natural actors. The Savages flourishes, however, through their onscreen interactions with one another, as the duo exhibit a distinct symbiosis both with each other and the dialogue provided by Jenkins. The ways in which their disparate (and occasionally desparate) views come to life via Jenkins’ dialogue is emotionally laced without ever feeling maudlin. There is the perception that plenty of damage has been visited upon the Savage family, yet neither sibling wallows in that trauma even as it informs their adult lives. While neither Jon nor Wendy has mapped out a fully functional existence of their own, they don’t seem hopelessly adrift in a malaise so much as in need of a random spark that will allow them to experience the full range of motion they carry within their heads and hearts. Watching them navigate the beginnings of such a journey against the backdrop of the reintroduction of their father is alternately heartbreaking and illuminating, but the tones that Jenkins strikes resonate in an honest manner without pandering to snark or sentimentality. Jenkins frames the story in such a way as to showcase the ways in which black wit can highlight the unspoken bullet points concealed within any family’s history. In doing so, she has successfully integrated elements of comedy and drama without resorting to the dreaded dramedy, and The Savages finds it strength in the willingness of its primary contributors to imbue several emotional facets with requisite integrity and intensity. If laughter stops just short of being a cure-all, The Savages suggests that the juxtaposition of a few black observations and heartfelt heart pangs can give unexpected depth to some of life’s (and death’s) weightiest matters.

- Brant Miles