The rite of passage into taking responsibility of another life–having a baby–has been the topic of a lot of popular movies. We don’t see very many movies about another rite of passsage, taking responsibilty over death. Specifically, the death of a parent. Prenatal wards are fun, nursing homes are not. The death of a parent brings far more complexity and reflection. So, when I saw the logline for Tamara Jenkin’s new film, The Savages, I thought this is a movie that will either be great or awful.

Wendy (Laura Linney) and Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman)–both struggling playwrites–are unexpectedly given the responsibility to care for a father (who was not much of a father) as he suffers from dementia in his last few months of life. I don’t know if it’s an easy film to connect to if you’re not somebody who has admitted a parent to a nursing home. Or if you don’t have siblings choosing divergent paths in dealing with a tragi-family. But if you fall into one of those two categories, The Savages is a really rich movie, and it’s full of dark humor you have to develop when things aren’t funny. (Linney and Hoffman have unexpectedly amazing chemistry to pull this off.)

It was a good decision on Jenkins’ part to not spend any time in flashbacks or expository dialogue about back story. She stays in the present and let’s the past weigh on Linney and Hoffman’s faces as they try to reconcile their guilt over caring for a father they’d rather just be dead. That way I didn’t feel like the movie was asking me to get sad. I was given the freedom to project my own life on it. I got to wonder what I’ll do in their situation and be surprised by what they do.

If it sounds like this is a character Laura Linney has played before, she has. The movie is like You Can Count on Me ten years later. Linney again plays an aging woman with no career success who latches on to men who are beneath her. But I don’t mind her reprisal of other characters. I like her desire to play in small family dramas where the victories are subtle and the relationships complicated. But these are movies I can’t really call great or awful. The truth is, if you connect to it, the pay off of The Savages is good medicine. It’s taking time to think about something most of us would rather avoid: The dark, silly, funky feelings family brings up.