#7. The Savages
Ravaged by dementia, Dad must be institutionalized. His adult children, obscurely damaged (largely by him, we are led to believe), must see to his needs. It's not a job either of them is up for. He (Philip Seymour Hoffman again) is an emotionally withdrawn college professor. She (Laura Linney) is an unproduced playwright pretending all right, lying about her needs and her achievements. 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.
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