Dysfunction Junction

Some thoughts on The Savages:

Indie movie checklist:

• Philip Seymour Hoffman (check)
• Laura Linney (check)
• main characters with professions that no real human being has but appeal to upwardly-mobile yupster indie movie audience types (theatre professor and aspiring playwright, repsectively) (check)
  
• familial obligation pulling dysfuctional family back together to contemplate meaning of family/relationships to each other (check)
• Kinks song on soundtrack (check)
• Offbeat locations (Sun City, Arizona and Buffalo, NY) (Check)
  
• Indie-rific cartoon iconography (check)
• Cute offbeat animal scene (check)
  

I saw this movie at 4:10 pm on a Thursday in Chatham, New Jersey, which put me at about 20 years junior to the next youngest audience member. I have to wonder what the elderly think about representations of senior citizens that are a) clearly designed for the amusement of us younger folks - old people dancing in sparkling Busby Berkeley-type outfits, riding on bicycles built for two, getting their nails done whilst catatonic (though, to be fair, the movie resists the temptation to play dementia for heartwarming laughs or sentimental kindling), or b) show the end of life in graphic detail. Basically, if you were 75 and with it, how would you feel about scenes of your septuagenarian peers fouling themselves or playing around with their feces? Is it like a sneak preview of a living hell? Is there some kind of elaborate subconscious process of dissociation? Are seniors so accustomed to watching friends and loved ones go down that very same road that it's like water off a duck's back? Weird.

P.S. I suppose I should say that I liked the The Savages a great deal, though "enjoyed" may be too strong a word, given the subject matter. The movie has been pitched as a kind of dark comedy, which it isn't, though I think the marketing has been designed to get asses into the seats in anticipation that "two siblings deal with end-of-life care for estranged father" might not exactly be a tempting enough inducement. However it's never depressing or heavy handed; even the budget nursing home Linney and Hoffman choose for their father is, though obviously far from luxuriant, not drearily antiseptic. As for the acting, both stars are excellent, though I feel that Linney has been given more of the load to shoulder, standing in as a proxy for writer-director Tamara Jenkins; Hoffman, who has received more of the laurels, turns in a fine performance as well, playing an unsleazy version of his "Mattress King" character from Punch Drunk Love. It's a shame to say, but The Savages is precisely the type of muted, small-scale effort that racks up a couple of nominations and critcs' awards, but gets lost among the more biff-pow Oscar-season fare, like Charlie Wilson's War, Sweeney Todd, and There Will Be Blood. It doesn't deserve to be. Bucks are limited; at least check it out when it arrives on DVD.