The Savages (2007). Directed by Tamara Jenkins. Written by Tamara Jenkins. Release Date: January 17, 2008. Country of Production: United States. Key Cast: Laura Linney (Wendy Savage), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jon Savage), Philip Bosco (Lenny Savages).
The Savages had an ad campaign that was very effective. It was marketed as a quirky, independent dark comedy. The commercials integrated a few clever jokes and Philip Seymour Hoffman (whom I know is funny).
So I bought the DVD blind. It was at Blockbuster and I needed one more film to round out my 3 for 2 deal.
Not surprisingly, and I’m sure several people can back me up on this, the film did not follow the patterns of the genre it had been advertised to belong to. Dark comedy is dark in subject matter, but still features jokes/writing that is comedic.
The Savages was never funny. It was clever at times, but there was nothing humorous about the characters or their situation. The film is about a brother and sister who are forced to take care of their father who had abandoned them when they were young. The situation—although I can see in some aspects how humor can be worked in—was serious. It wasn’t about coping with death, so much as coping with the stage every person goes through right before death—the decay.
The film took time to build up interestingly flawed characters in Hoffman and Laura Linney. The plot was very character driven…it was simple and slow, and watched like a short story (I always have trouble describing this—I think in this film it was mostly because of the simple plot and the multi-dimensional characters). The writing was strong, and my roommate pointed out that the main characters had the same names as the kids from Peter Pan…which was really excellent.
So, if you are still with me, picture this simple, clean movie with really beautiful, awful moments in these two characters’ lives with an overlay of ‘50’s crooner songs.
The opening song is “You Make Me Feel So Young…”
So I bought the DVD blind. It was at Blockbuster and I needed one more film to round out my 3 for 2 deal.
Not surprisingly, and I’m sure several people can back me up on this, the film did not follow the patterns of the genre it had been advertised to belong to. Dark comedy is dark in subject matter, but still features jokes/writing that is comedic.
The Savages was never funny. It was clever at times, but there was nothing humorous about the characters or their situation. The film is about a brother and sister who are forced to take care of their father who had abandoned them when they were young. The situation—although I can see in some aspects how humor can be worked in—was serious. It wasn’t about coping with death, so much as coping with the stage every person goes through right before death—the decay.
The film took time to build up interestingly flawed characters in Hoffman and Laura Linney. The plot was very character driven…it was simple and slow, and watched like a short story (I always have trouble describing this—I think in this film it was mostly because of the simple plot and the multi-dimensional characters). The writing was strong, and my roommate pointed out that the main characters had the same names as the kids from Peter Pan…which was really excellent.
So, if you are still with me, picture this simple, clean movie with really beautiful, awful moments in these two characters’ lives with an overlay of ‘50’s crooner songs.
The opening song is “You Make Me Feel So Young…”
Point being—you cannot make a movie into something that it is not through scoring…at least not in this case. When you have a flat-out dramatic piece of work, the ironic music doesn’t “highlight the darkness of the situation in a humorous way.” It doesn’t. It just creates a sort of incongruity that is neither funny nor sensible. It’s a square peg. I’m not one to call out anything for not following form, but the difference is, I believe, The Savages scoring felt like a mistake…a miswrite…a break down in communication between two people along the way. “Track 9” was misread as “Track 4.”
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