Comedy can be entertaining but tragedy sticks to your bones. Well, that's the conventional wisdom about art, and after seeing "The Savages," marketed with a light-hearted tone but comprising two hours of wall-to-wall suffering only occasionally leavened by humor, I think the old saying is true. Except that "The Savages" is just too gruesomely realistic -- not in the sense of explicit images, but with its relentless focus on the consequences of aging and death.
I suffered.
I had a bad night after I got home.
I'm glad I saw the movie. I think it deserves a ton of awards.
It's the story of a dying man whose companion dies and whose alienated adult children (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) step in to care for him. He's a jerk and it's an ugly situation. No one is connected to anyone else in a meaningful way, and though the characters grow during the film (the only real positive of tragedy), it's a rough, rough ride.
But wow. I felt cellularly rearranged by seeing it. Glad Hollywood had the guts to make it, even if the marketing was a little deceptive.
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