JJ79, I enjoyed you detailed and thoughtful review of The Savages (2007). Few people ever comment on others’ reviews on Spout, so I’d like to comment on yours, for a change. Your main point is that neither Wendy (Laura Linney) nor Jon (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) “give us enough to latch onto,” that the movie “never gives us a reason to care about either one of them.” Although I agree the characters can be annoying, the movie does try to make them somewhat sympathetic. We learn in bits and pieces how dysfunctional their family was—mother essentially not there, father physically abusive to the son as the father’s father was to him. Although the movie does not connect all the dots, we see the sorry outcome of this sad upbringing: Wendy, who is smart, talented, and good-looking, has no self-confidence; Jon, who is smart, talented, and emotional, tries to restrict himself to the intellectual in both his academic career interests and in his personal life. One reaction to these characters is, as you say, to want to give them a good slap. I could see this reaction if the characters felt sorry for themselves. But far from whining, they soldier on, trying to overcome the worst of their upbringing and character traits.
I know you object that “the children learn nothing,” but I think for all their trying, they do improve. As the movie draws to a close, Jon is, tentatively of course, headed for Poland to possibly reunite with a woman who loves or loved him. His mumble about meeting her family suggests that he is open to the permanent commitment that he previously refused. In addition, Jon and Wendy develop a better relationship. They have moved from distant (early in the film) to confrontational (yelling at each other about research grants) to where Jon gives Wendy substantial praise for her play—that’s probably the most important thing he could do for her at that moment. The movie ends by focussing on Wendy’s growth. When she gave up her pathetic affair with a married man, she asked for and got his old Golden Retriever that he was going have put down because of its hip dysphasia. The last shot in the film is of her jogging with the dog who has obviously had the expensive surgery and is rehabilitating with training wheels. Wendy has become less self-absorbed and able to do something for another living being. She has broken out of her passivity and taken action. This change occurred gradually—first being forced into taking care of her father in Arizona, to decorating his room in the Buffalo old-folks’ home, to looking for alternative accommodation for him, to somehow getting her play produced. Significantly, her proactive commitment is not an easy one (say, to a cute little puppy) but to an old dog with health problems. In contrast to her ex-lover who was going to take the easy way out and simply have the dog put down, she invests the money (she has little money and the vet bills are high) and the effort with no guarantee that the rehabilitation will work or the old dog will live much longer. Although Wendy has not learned how to bring peace to the planet, she has made a realistic and salient change for her.
On another note, I agree that the look of the movie is superb. W. Mott Hupfel III makes statements with his camera which, juxtaposed with what is supposed to be going on, generate an on-going critique. This visual commentary is set up in the opening scene: The elderly ladies doing 1930s choreographed dance routines on a lawn in front of a verdant hedge look idyllic; then the camera pans to show the desert and ticky-tacky houses of an Arizona retirement community.
Interestingly, the music supplies another layer of commentary. The tinkley but not annoying original music often plays over a serious scene suggesting, accurately when you think of it, that the people in the serious situation are not being straight-forward and honest with each other or, sometimes, with themselves.
The movie is brilliant. But simultaneous, multiple layers of critique also keep the movie from generating much warmth, a feeling you clearly experienced. I admired the maturity of the writing, the wit of the critique, and the importance of the topic enough to really like the movie at somewhat of a distance.