New Indie Film Takes on The Difficult Challenge of Family Caregiving

Be on the lookout for a recently released independent film that may be hard to find in the theaters despite the presence of well known Hollywood actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. Two reasons it may not show up at your local Cineplex is that 1. It was made on a budget of only $8 million; 2. The subject matter is one about which most Americans are in complete denial.

“The Savages” Tamara Jenkins' new film, “brutally explores the realities and difficulties of aging” according to Georgetown University’s campus newspaper, The Hoya. (Oct. 17,2007)

“The Savages is an intelligent family drama that penetrates deeply into the psyche of the audience, and explores with a blunt and sometimes unsettling perspective, the challenges that present themselves as we, and those around us, age. “

In this fictional account of a family caregiving issue, Wendy and Jon Savage (Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman) must fly from their homes in New York City to figure out how to deal with a parent who can no longer take care of himself, and who also didn't take particularly good care of them as children.

The Hoya concludes that “The Savages is a painful yet necessary examination of the realities of aging. Supported by faultless performances, Jenkins' narrative effectively inspires self-reflection on a subject that is rarely spoken about but that is universally experienced.”

The film and it’s director, Tamara Jenkins is discussed at length in todays New York Sunday Times (Nov. 4)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/movies/moviesspecial/04lim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=arts&pagewanted=all

According to the Times “... the film captures the sorrow, anxiety and sheer disruptive tumult involved in dealing with aging, dying parents — a subject at once universal and vaguely taboo.”

In the Times article Jenkins is quotes as saying “It’s something that everybody feels or that everybody thinks about,”... “it sort of happens outside the community, off the grid,” she said. “You go off and deal with this death thing, or this nursing-home-transition thing.”