Unsatisfactory careers and bad relationships are the common conditions of Wendy Savage and Jon Savage. The former has repeatedly failed to apply for scholarships and is always living with a married man. The latter An important project of her was put on hold for some reason, and her girlfriend was about to return to China due to the expiry of her visa. The city where the two work and live is not far away, but they never communicate. One day Wendy got a call saying that her father Randy Savage's girlfriend Doris had passed away and started to have Alzheimer's symptoms, so the old lady's children wanted to leave Randy in his own hands. child support. Jon and Wendy suffered from their father's tyrannical temper since they were young. They tried their best to be independent as adults and broke with their father for nearly 20 years. Now they have to take on the responsibility of taking care of him. The Savage family, who had been separated for many years, came together again. The two brothers and sisters who had been in bad relations for many years also began to get to know each other again, and together they faced the new wounds that appeared on their already riddled life.
The subject matter of the film is in the same vein as several of Payne's representative works, aimed at those who are struggling in the maelstrom of family and emotion. The ingenious choreography brings freshness to the original core of the story, and although the details in [The Savages] are not as splendid and pitch-like as Payne's works, they can be regarded as occasional inspirations. For example, in the scene where Wendy goes to work at the beginning of the film, Wendy uses the computer to print out various scholarship applications, while carefully avoiding being noticed by her colleagues. Wendy's narration and lively music vividly convey the double embarrassment of Wendy's life and career. In addition, details such as Jon's balloon, Doris' painkiller, father's diapers, aid group, potted tree, red desk lamp, red pillow, etc., also jump out from time to time during the film's progress to catch the eye. A little bit of style from Payne. It's a pity that these details, which are of the quality of gems, were randomly thrown around by the director, and there was a missing line to connect them together. Let the word "resonance" drift away, so that the audience seems to be watching something unrelated to them from the end. The ending of the film is even more surprising. Although from the beginning of the film, you can completely predict the direction of each next step, and even the happy ending at the end, but because of the imbalance in the arrangement of details, the last two brothers and sisters are not only in the clouds. There is no sense of success, but it shows the deliberateness of the director, which is expected and unreasonable.
The opening scene of the movie is a peaceful and serene Sun City, with blue sky and white clouds and green trees. With Peggy Lee's I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard, a group of aunts in blue dresses walk from the green. After the plants came out and danced, a group of old ladies were looking at something in the same direction in the blue swimming pool. The soothing and brisk opening set a light comedy tone for the whole film. The film is also interspersed with many brisk ballads and smart clips, and the ending uses I'm Sticking that appeared in [Juno]. With You. It can be seen that the director tries to imitate the light-heavy Payne style and interpret the heavy life in the form of comedy. However, throughout the whole film, no matter the lines or the plot from beginning to end, there are almost no jokes, but occasionally the two protagonists are exaggerated and humorous to pretend to be relaxed. There is no [Walking Side by Side] where Mike runs naked out of his lover's house and makes people laugh out loud, and there is no [About Schmidt] where Mr. Schmidt receives a greeting card and paint from Wu Dugu. The scenes that make people smile, smiles, smirks, wry smiles, sneers, hideous smiles... all of them are lacking. The choreographer tried his best to pretend to be relaxed, but in fact it was extremely dull, and the sense of incongruity in his temperament made people feel like they were stuck in their throats.
The cast of the film can be described as luxurious, Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman plays his brother Jon, and two-time Oscar nominee Laura Linney plays Wendy. When Philip Seymour Hoffman took over the film, he had just been crowned the Oscar winner with [Capote]. This time he played a middle-aged intellectual again, which explained Jon's powerlessness in the face of life in detail. Uncertainty in emotion, the performance is accurate. But Hoffman certainly did not take into account the gender issue of the director when he took the role. He did not expect that although his performance was hard enough, it was still overshadowed by the heroine's edge. Compared with Jon's image of a middle-aged gentle man, Wendy's role is undoubtedly more delicate and complex under the sculpture of the female choreographer, and Laura Linney has a lot more space for expression. In the face of the best actor, Laura Linney showed no timidity, and her performance was relaxed and meticulous, so whenever the two played against each other, there must be sparks. And the films that were basically defeated in terms of directors and screenwriters also relied on the performances of the two actors to prop up their appearance.
Originally published in "Watching the Movie"
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