Rama’s SCREEN

These are two great actors playing siblings who are trying to figure out the best way to take care of their father suffering from old age and dimentia but at the same time each of them can’t even take care of his or her own life. THE SAVAGES is like a dark comedy or comedy drama deals with… how to return the favor to our parents who’ve raised us. Nursing home to some is considered an insult, an act of abandoning loved ones by throwing them to the hands of strangers. One might even be considered to some as a heartless savage for doing so.

Jon (Hoffman) is a college professor, writing a book but is afraid of commitment. His sister Wendy (Linney) is a struggling playwright who likes to steal things from the office and have sex with her married neighbor. The last thing they want is to rekindle family history but when a call informs that their father is slowly being consumed by dimentia, they’re going to have to put their differences aside and help figure out how to handle their father’s final days.

This movie does bring an interesting point that most care facilities for the elderly, their target market or how they make profit is by focusing on the families. They make their buildings nice with all the comfort and luxury, it’s all so that those who decide to put their fathers or mothers in those facilities wouldn’t feel the guilt of admitting them there.

The acting of all the actors in this movie is beyond any doubt, superb. They do well in showing us how dysfunctional their family is but at the same time they try real hard to make it work. The family relationship must stay together despite the lies, and the hurt and the past that’s made them who they are. The arguments just make the characters seem very real as brother and sister.

I think the story, especially the writing’s excellent. This subject matter is question we all hate to face but we’re gonna have to someday. We all like to think that each individual member of the family can just go on separately living life forever without each other’s help but the similar issue might surface and we’re going to have to re-learn how to be a family again, and it’s difficult for some of us who may have been raised not certain what family was all about.
It’s a bit slow, I think those who can’t appreciate this type of movie would find it very boring.
I think the movie also deals with growing old and the truth that comes with growing old. The siblings realize that they’re not going to live forever so they would have to get their act together and start taking positive action and making wise decisions.

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