The Savages (film)
Encyclopedia
The Savages is a 2007 American comedy-drama
Comedy-drama
Comedy-drama is a genre of theatre, film and television programs which combines humorous and serious content.-Theatre:Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy...

 film, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins
Tamara Jenkins
Tamara Jenkins is an American screenwriter, actress and director. She is best known for her two feature films, Slums of Beverly Hills and The Savages .-Early life:...

. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Philip Seymour Hoffman is an American actor and director. Hoffman began acting in television in 1991, and the following year started to appear in films...

 and Laura Linney
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

.

Plot

After drifting apart emotionally over the years, two single siblings — Wendy (Linney) and Jon (Hoffman) — band together to care for their estranged, elderly father, Lenny (Philip Bosco
Philip Bosco
-Personal life:Bosco was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of Margaret Raymond , a policewoman, and Philip Lupo Bosco, a carnival worker. Bosco went to high school at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City. He attended the Catholic University of Washington, D.C. Bosco married Nancy...

), who is rapidly slipping into dementia
Dementia
Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...

. Wendy and Jon first travel to Sun City, Arizona
Sun City, Arizona
Sun City is a census-designated place and unincorporated town in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. The population was 38,309 at the 2000 census...

, to attend the funeral of their father's girlfriend of 20 years. When they arrive, they are told that their father signed a non-marriage agreement and will not have rights to any of her property. They then move him to a nursing home in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

, where Jon is a theater professor working on a book about Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

. Wendy, who is an aspiring, but unsuccessful, playwright, moves from New York City to help establish their father in Buffalo.

Neither is close with Lenny, who is said to have been a difficult man to live with. (It is implied that he was a physically and emotionally abusive
Verbal abuse
Verbal abuse is best described as a negative defining statement told to you or about you; or by withholding any response thus defining the target as non-existant...

 father when Jon and Wendy were growing up and they cut him out of their lives.) Their dysfunctional family
Dysfunctional family
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...

 life appears to have left Wendy and Jon emotionally crippled and unable to sustain a relationship. She is sleeping with an unattainable married man 13 years her senior and he cannot commit to a Polish woman who must return to Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...

 after her visa expires.

Their visits to the nursing home and their father's eventual death allow them to reevaluate their lives and to grow emotionally. In the end, Wendy is seen working on the production of her play about their terrible childhood and Jon is leaving for a conference in Poland where it is suggested he may reconnect with the woman he had let go.

Cast

  • Philip Seymour Hoffman
    Philip Seymour Hoffman
    Philip Seymour Hoffman is an American actor and director. Hoffman began acting in television in 1991, and the following year started to appear in films...

     as Jon Savage
  • Laura Linney
    Laura Linney
    Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

     as Wendy Savage
  • Philip Bosco
    Philip Bosco
    -Personal life:Bosco was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of Margaret Raymond , a policewoman, and Philip Lupo Bosco, a carnival worker. Bosco went to high school at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City. He attended the Catholic University of Washington, D.C. Bosco married Nancy...

     as Lenny Savage
  • Peter Friedman
    Peter Friedman
    Peter Friedman is an American stage, film and television actor.Born in New York City, Friedman graduated from Hofstra University before making his Broadway debut in The Great God Brown in 1972...

     as Larry
  • Guy Boyd
    Guy Boyd (actor)
    Guy Boyd is an American character actor. He has starred in over fifty films from the late 1970s to the present. He is probably best known for his role as Detective Jim McLean in Brian De Palma's thriller Body Double...

     as Bill Lachman
  • Debra Monk
    Debra Monk
    Debra Monk is an American actress, singer, and writer.Monk was born in Middletown, Ohio. She was voted "best personality" by the graduating class at Wheaton High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. She graduated from Frostburg State University in 1963...

     as Nancy Lachman
  • David Zayas
    David Zayas
    David Zayas is a Puerto Rican theatrical, film, and television actor. He is most known for his roles as Angel Batista on Showtime's series Dexter and as Enrique Morales on the HBO prison drama Oz.- Life and career :...

     as Eduardo
  • Gbenga Akinnagbe
    Gbenga Akinnagbe
    Gbenga Akinnagbe is an American actor, best known for his role as Chris Partlow on the HBO original series The Wire.-Early life:...

     as Jimmy
  • Tonye Patano
    Tonye Patano
    Tonye Patano is an American actress. She is most known for portraying Heylia James on the American TV show Weeds.She has appeared in television shows such as Law & Order, Sex and the City, Monk and Third Watch...

     as Mrs. Robinson
  • Cara Seymour
    Cara Seymour
    Cara Seymour is an English actress of stage and screen. She has appeared in many ensemble casts for acclaimed films such as American Psycho, Adaptation., Gangs of New York, Hotel Rwanda, and The Savages....

     as Kasia
  • Rosemary Murphy
    Rosemary Murphy
    Rosemary Murphy is an American actress of stage, film, and television.Murphy was born in Munich, Germany, the daughter of American parents Mildred and Robert D. Murphy, a diplomat...

     as Doris Metzger

Critical reception

The film received very favorable reviews from critics. As of January 5, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 reported that 91% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 113 reviews. Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

 reported the film had an average score of 85 out of 100, based on 35 reviews.

Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine's Richard Schickel
Richard Schickel
Richard Warren Schickel is an American author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He is a film critic for Time magazine, having also written for Life magazine and the Los Angeles Times Book Review....

 named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #7, and praising both the cast and writer-director thus: "These actors are unimprovable as, somehow, they find a certain decency under the pressure of their grinding familial chore, a reason to hope that slightly better days may be ahead for them once their duty has been done. Writer-director Tamara Jenkins is less interested in heroically inspiring us than she is in showing us the values to be found in the more modest forms of dutifulness."

Top ten lists

The film appeared on many critics' top 10 lists of the best films of 2007.
  • 1st - Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times
    Los Angeles Times
    The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

    (tied with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film)
    The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a 2007 biographical drama film based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir of the same name. The film depicts Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke, on December 8, 1995, at the age of 42, which left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. The...

    )
  • 3rd - Ella Taylor, LA Weekly
    LA Weekly
    LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...

    (tied with Away from Her
    Away From Her
    Away from Her is a 2006 Canadian film which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and also played in the Premier category at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival...

    )
  • 3rd - Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
    The Hollywood Reporter
    Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

  • 5th - David Edelstein, New York
    New York (magazine)
    New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

    magazine
  • 5th - Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle
  • 6th - Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer
    The Charlotte Observer
    The Charlotte Observer, serving Charlotte, North Carolina and its metro area, is the largest newspaper, in terms of circulation, in North Carolina and South Carolina...

  • 7th - Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
    The Hollywood Reporter
    Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

  • 7th - Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle
    San Francisco Chronicle
    thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

  • 7th - Richard Schickel, TIME magazine
    Time (magazine)
    Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

  • 8th - Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
    The Hollywood Reporter
    Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

  • 8th - Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club
    The A.V. Club
    The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...

  • 8th - Ray Bennett, The Hollywood Reporter
    The Hollywood Reporter
    Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

  • 9th - A. O. Scott
    A. O. Scott
    Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...

    , The New York Times
    The New York Times
    The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

    (tied with Away from Her
    Away From Her
    Away from Her is a 2006 Canadian film which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and also played in the Premier category at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival...

    )
  • 10th - Carrie Rickey, The Philadelphia Inquirer
    The Philadelphia Inquirer
    The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...

  • 10th - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
    The New York Times
    The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

    (7-way tie)

Awards and nominations

  • 80th Academy Awards
    80th Academy Awards
    The 80th Academy Awards ceremony honored the best films in 2007 and was broadcast from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, California on ABC beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST/8:30 p.m. EST, February 24, 2008 . During the ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Academy Awards in 24...

    • Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Laura Linney
      Laura Linney
      Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

      )
    • Original Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins
      Tamara Jenkins
      Tamara Jenkins is an American screenwriter, actress and director. She is best known for her two feature films, Slums of Beverly Hills and The Savages .-Early life:...

      )

  • Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards
    • Actor of the Year (Philip Seymour Hoffman
      Philip Seymour Hoffman
      Philip Seymour Hoffman is an American actor and director. Hoffman began acting in television in 1991, and the following year started to appear in films...

      ) -- WON (Also for: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
      Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
      Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a 2007 crime drama directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Kelly Masterson. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney. The title comes from the Irish saying: "May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows...

      and Charlie Wilson's War
      Charlie Wilson's War
      Charlie Wilson's War is a 2007 American biographical comedy drama film recounting the true story of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson who partnered with "bare knuckle attitude" CIA operative Gust Avrakotos to launch Operation Cyclone, a program to organize and support the Afghan mujahideen in their...

      )

  • Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
    • Best Actress (Laura Linney)
    • Best Screenplay, Original (Tamara Jenkins)

  • 65th Golden Globe Awards
    65th Golden Globe Awards
    The 65th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television of 2007, were scheduled to be presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association on January 13, 2008...

    • Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy (Philip Seymour Hoffman)

  • Gotham Awards
    Gotham Awards
    The Gotham Awards is an annual ceremony of awards presented to the makers of independent films which takes place in New York City...

    • Best Ensemble Cast (Philip Bosco
      Philip Bosco
      -Personal life:Bosco was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of Margaret Raymond , a policewoman, and Philip Lupo Bosco, a carnival worker. Bosco went to high school at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City. He attended the Catholic University of Washington, D.C. Bosco married Nancy...

      , Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney)

  • Independent Spirit Awards
    Independent Spirit Awards
    The Independent Spirit Awards , founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the paltry budgets of independent films. In 1986, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit...

    • Best Cinematography (W. Mott Hupfel III)
    • Best Director (Tamara Jenkins)
    • Best Male Lead (Philip Seymour Hoffman) -- WON
    • Best Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins) -- WON

  • London Critics Circle Film Awards
    London Film Critics Circle
    The London Film Critics' Circle is the name by which the Film Section of The Critics' Circle is known internationally.The word London was added because it was thought the term Critics' Circle Film Awards lacked meaning — for people in LA for example — and the Film Section wished its annual Awards...

    • Actress of the Year (Laura Linney)

  • Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
    • Best Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins) -- WON

  • National Society of Film Critics Awards
    National Society of Film Critics Awards 2007
    The 42nd National Society of Film Critics Awards, given on 5 January 2008, honored the best filmmaking of 2007.-Best Picture::1. There Will Be Blood2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly...

    • Best Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins) -- WON

  • Nilsson Awards for Film
    • Best Picture
    • Best Actor in a Leading Role (Philip Seymour Hoffman)
    • Best Actress in a Leading Role (Laura Linney)
    • Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Philip Bosco)
    • Best Original Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins)
    • Best Cast
    • Best Original Score

  • Online Film Critics Society Awards
    • Best Actress (Laura Linney)

  • San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards
    San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards
    San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards are given annually to honor fine achievements in filmmaking by an organization of film reviewers from San Francisco-based publications....

    • Best Screenplay - Original (Tamara Jenkins) -- WON

  • Satellite Awards
    Satellite Awards
    The Satellite Awards are an annual award given by the International Press Academy. The awards were originally known as the Golden Satellite Awards.- Film :*Best Actor – Drama*Best Actor – Musical or Comedy*Best Actress – Drama...

    • Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama (Laura Linney)

  • Women's Film Critics Circle Awards
    • Best Actress (Laura Linney) -- WON

  • Writers Guild of America Awards
    • Best Original Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins)
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