'The Savages'

It's been a while since I did one of these things, but I guess I have felt that the surge for an award movies kind of left me out of breath with their quantity. There have been a few gems, but nothing that I really felt needed an article on here, with the exception to 'There Will Be Blood' which I am working on currently in long hand.
"The Savages" is quite a unique film about what happens when a middle-aged brother and sister come to terms with their estranged father in need of personal care. The first viewing hit pretty close to home on a few levels, and I felt that I should keep my thoughts to myself at first. But the more I did the more I realized the film tried to accomplish, and I recently saw it for a second time which sparked this excerpt. Phillip Seymour Hoffman does an exceptional job playing himself, I viewed his character as actual actor because it is played down to his gritty and honest level. His clothes, his style of speech, even his never ending stubble screams method acting, but not on the level of Robert De Niro or Al Pacino as they profess today. I am referring to the day when actors worked for a living and invested their life in their characters, big or small. What comes out from this performance is the best depiction of this style of acting I have seem in years. There are rough spots such as when he answers his phone in the middle of a lecture about the difference between plot and narrative to hear that his father went in a coma. But as a whole I have to say wow.
Laura Linney plays his quirky sister that is temping her way to a grant for her play about their childhood. She lies to gain affection from her peers and she feels guilty for putting her father into a nursing home when she is actually doing him a favor by taking care of him in the first place. Her character comes full circle when she is forced to care for her brother as well after a tennis incident that pins him to a wall with weights to balance his joints and relieve stress. It is at this moment that she picks him apart with jealousy about how he is semi-successful and she is 'portable' as her brother words it. In her defense she claims a Guggenheim grant, which he has been denied from a number of times, and all he can do is act amazed that she did something he has continued to fail at. It turns out that this is also a lie, which he discovers, and she boasts that even in her misery he finds a way to mock her ambition.
I guess ambition doesn't amount to much when people lie about their accomplishments, but it all works out in the end because she sells a script and her brother watches a stage call and cries from the realism. Overall, I enjoyed the personal touches and writing between the two, they really play off each-other very well as if they were brother and sister. Their styles of living are very different which makes for a great combo when they are forced together during this time, and the ending is uplifting on a few aspects that would probably be left untouched by conventional writers for purposes of the plot. See this movie when you can, you may not like it at first for the brutal truth that ensues, but after it's over and the days following will make you think about what will happen when you get in this situation. At the very least you will have some experience as to what should happen when you are in their shoes.