Crying Over the Eggs

I just saw the film The Savages with Laura Linney (Wendy) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jon), no doubt two of our finest actors today. The plot centered on the approaching-middle-aged siblings who must make a decision about their aging father's care. As all good movies do, one can take away many lessons to apply to one's own life. The best one, in my opinion, occurs when Jon's girlfriend states to Wendy something like, "When I make him eggs, he cries." While that statement is never explained in the movie, I think the audience can draw some conclusions as to why Jon responds in that way. It relates to the fact that no one has ever shown Jon much kindness in his life.

The movie does not go into detail until the conclusion about the reasons Wendy and Jon have not visited their father in a very long time. There are some hints here and there about their parents' neglect of them emotionally through the years, however, as in Wendy's comment, "Maybe dad didn't abandon us. Maybe he just forgot who we were." Since Jon is the older of the siblings, I am sure he felt the full weight of being responsible for his younger sister. He was the caregiver and the "cooker of the eggs" if you will through the years. It is now hard for him as an adult to accept the routine kindnesses of others without a show of emotion.

It is interesting that Jon is a theater professor in Buffalo who is attempting to produce a seminal work on German playwright Bertolt Brecht and that Wendy is an aspiring playwright herself, though her plays remain unproduced. Brecht frequently stated that the purpose of theater is to educate, "It is the noblest function that we have found for 'theatre.'" I would say also that the writer of The Savages, Tamara Jenkins, also concurs with Brecht. We simply cannot see this film without becoming convicted of our sins of omission daily to those who have the greatest need for a little kindness.