The Savages

“You stole painkillers from a dead woman?”

Death becomes a part of life when you have no choice but to embrace it.

Despite having full knowledge of the discomfort of the small screening room at the Kimbal Theatre, I couldn’t wait any longer to see The Savages. Just for the record – I would gladly sit in those uncomfortable chairs for another two hours just to watch this film again. Tamara Jenkins created a subtly emotional work of art to which many people can relate, and that many others should. The Savages centers on Wendy (Laura Linney) and John (Philip Seymour Hoffman) Savage, two siblings learning to cope with taking care of their ailing father (Philip Bosco). Those who read my reviews know that I despise going into too much detail on the plot, so I will just jump right into the critique!

This film’s obvious theme is death. Death is a part of life, and learning to cope with it can be very tough. The two main characters, Wendy and John, have to embrace the reality that their father is dying, and they furthermore have to figure out for themselves what it will mean. Their father hadn’t been a particularly good parent, but Wendy and John play the part of concerned children that want to make the amends that their father had failed to do over the years. I like that this film doesn’t try to euphemize death. Death is indeed a part of life, and as much as we might hate it, if we don’t embrace it before it embraces us, then there is really no point in being alive in the first place.

The dynamic between Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman took my breath away. The characters seem like ordinary people. I suppose, in retrospect, they are ordinary people. Maybe that’s why it impressed me – it was real. There are many aspects in the characters that I have seen in my own family – but that’s an entirely different story meant for a more sensational newspaper. The Savage siblings are very much like the siblings many of us have. All of us have to endure someone dying before we experience death ourselves. The real characters and the real situations make this film a real experience, filled with emotion that everyone should expect to experience in the future.

I can’t figure one thing out – Philip Seymour Hoffman was excluded from the Academy Award’s nomination for Best Actor. His performance easily beats out two nominees I have in mind. And, now that I’ve seen all the films that were in the Best Actress category, I think that Laura Linney deserved her long overdue statue. That’s not to take credit away from Marion Cotillard’s brilliant performance in La Vie En Rose.

The acting was brilliant. The story was brilliant. The message was brilliant. The composition was brilliant. I sometimes feel guilty about giving superior grades to films, but this one hold no guilt. This is the second (and probably last) time I will say this about a 2007 film – I give it an A!