CINEMA: The Savages

At long last Hollywood is waking up to the fact that old age is not always a golden time of reminiscences and banter with friends, but can be a truly horrible nightmare.

Having to put an aged relative into a home is never an easy choice to make, and when they are suffering from dementia and at their most vulnerable, it can feel like the biggest of betrayals. This is the set up here as domineering Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco) starts to lose his marbles and needs full-time care.

His estranged daughter Wendy (Laura Linney) and son Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman), find themselves involved in their father’s life in ways they never imagined or wanted as it falls to them to find a nursing home willing to take him. They bicker, they fall out, they say horrible things to each other they don’t really mean, and all the while Lenny is sailing off into some hazy twilight world where he doesn’t even recognise them.

What The Savages does so well is show the awkwardness of old age, the lack of dignity and of personal volition as those around you make your decisions for you. It also shows how dysfunctional families send ripples out to all those around them.

Although it is shot through with dark humour, it does not disguise the bleakness and pathos of those living with dementia and the challenges it poses for all involved. Linney and Hoffman are both past masters at conveying troubled and damaged characters, but what shines through here more than anything else is their humanity and fragility, as they have to make some of the hardest and most painful decisions of their lives.     Dee Pilgrim