About an acclaimed film "the Savages"-

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Frankly I cannot understand how "The Savages" could earn such a chorus of consensus. The movie deals with one of the most unbearable problems of the modern epoch: aging without an affectionate family who might take care of you out of love and not out of "duty", and the uselessness of old people and their suffering: it's not a possible subject of comedy, period. Here there is a mixture of horror and of an attempt to exorcize this horror with some humour. But no joking and quoting Brecht can do it. It leaves you with a feeling of a phoney approach to a desperate matter.

I haven't seen "The Savages" but from what you say it sounds depressing. What was the film-maker's intention with this film do you think, to draw attention to the plight of old people? Or is it a 'let's have a laugh about it and trivialise it'?

Review by Mark Dujsik:
"I keep thinking of that Ebert mantra: "A movie is not what it's about; it's how it's about it." The subject of The Savages, which deals with two siblings determining what to do with their aging, ailing father, is weighty. This will have some people immediately think it's an important movie. Writer/director Tamara Jenkins handles it with a bleak, darkly humorous tone. This will have some people instantly think it's edgy. She populates her script with two smart intellectuals, who hold in their emotions and talk about intelligent things. This will have some people instantly think they're well-developed.
Notice all of these things are still "what" the movie is about, although that stuff about the tone is in part a way "how" it is about its "what." The problem is that while The Savages is in a way a brave movie about a serious topic, it is also predictably unconventional, indulgently metafictional, and hesitant about going for its alluded intentions. Jenkins wants to distance us from but also to sympathize with the characters, their troubles, and the larger scale melancholy at the premise's core. That's when I think of another saying: You can't have it both ways."

I italicized the words of this critic where he prudently criticizes the movie.
There is a French director, Bernard Tarvernier, whose movies are all about death but with all the delicacy and depth wich the subject deserves.