Steven Trask wrote the spare musical score and has done a splendid job. Siblings Hoffman and Linney are taking their fading Dad, Bosco, for a ride through the countryside in wintry New England. Half the time Old Dad doesn't know where he is or what's going on, although the other half of the time he's with it enough to explode with rage. Bosco turns up his musical ear plug and pulls his hood around his ears so he doesn't have to listen to his kids' shouted arguments.
Trask's music, mostly a slow piano and rhythm, dawdles along between a loopy childhood tune and something more melancholy. The car passes a country graveyard. Bosco only glances at it, but in those seconds some darker chords well up beneath the simple piano melody. The whole incident takes about fifteen seconds but demonstrates some of the care that went into this above-average production.
The script is skillfully done as well. It avoids two traps about old age and death -- one old, one kind of nouveau. The traditional one has everybody sobbing and lacerating themselves with guilt. The new one -- see "Terms of Endearment" -- overcomes this by going in the opposite direction, treating a terminal conditions matter-of-factly, half a joke, no sad songs for me.
Philip Bosco, when he has his wits about him, is an irritable old bastard. Hoffman and Linney, two "drama types," who have nothing else much in common, come together to figure out what to do with Dad, who has made himself too much of a pain to everyone, especially after that "toilet incident", in this ghastly retirement settlement in Arizona. The settlement itself is a living mausoleum. Every house is identical, right down to the lone palm tree occupying center place on the neatly trimmed front lawns. At first, I thought the houses were CGIs.
The film focuses not so much on Bosco as on Hoffman and Linney as they argue or earnestly discuss the best place for Dad to be. He's too wacky for "assisted living" but not bad enough for a hospice. The need for brother and sister to cooperate in order to achieve a superordinate goal coincidentally brings them together, Dad's parting gift -- one of his few.
It's not really a depressing film. There are subtle comic touches in the dialog and scattered here and there throughout the screenplay. When Linney strides determinedly down a hospital corridor, the squishing of her clumsy shoes is noticeable. And at the final home for the aged, the Thanksgiving cutout stapled to the bulletin board changes with appalling regularity to cuts outs of Santa Claus when November changes to December.
It's not exactly an exciting film but it's engrossing. The performances by all are outstanding, even in the smaller parts. What a shame about Hoffman. He had an unpretentious puss and a tubby body and he gave the rest of us acting lessons.
Trask's music, mostly a slow piano and rhythm, dawdles along between a loopy childhood tune and something more melancholy. The car passes a country graveyard. Bosco only glances at it, but in those seconds some darker chords well up beneath the simple piano melody. The whole incident takes about fifteen seconds but demonstrates some of the care that went into this above-average production.
The script is skillfully done as well. It avoids two traps about old age and death -- one old, one kind of nouveau. The traditional one has everybody sobbing and lacerating themselves with guilt. The new one -- see "Terms of Endearment" -- overcomes this by going in the opposite direction, treating a terminal conditions matter-of-factly, half a joke, no sad songs for me.
Philip Bosco, when he has his wits about him, is an irritable old bastard. Hoffman and Linney, two "drama types," who have nothing else much in common, come together to figure out what to do with Dad, who has made himself too much of a pain to everyone, especially after that "toilet incident", in this ghastly retirement settlement in Arizona. The settlement itself is a living mausoleum. Every house is identical, right down to the lone palm tree occupying center place on the neatly trimmed front lawns. At first, I thought the houses were CGIs.
The film focuses not so much on Bosco as on Hoffman and Linney as they argue or earnestly discuss the best place for Dad to be. He's too wacky for "assisted living" but not bad enough for a hospice. The need for brother and sister to cooperate in order to achieve a superordinate goal coincidentally brings them together, Dad's parting gift -- one of his few.
It's not really a depressing film. There are subtle comic touches in the dialog and scattered here and there throughout the screenplay. When Linney strides determinedly down a hospital corridor, the squishing of her clumsy shoes is noticeable. And at the final home for the aged, the Thanksgiving cutout stapled to the bulletin board changes with appalling regularity to cuts outs of Santa Claus when November changes to December.
It's not exactly an exciting film but it's engrossing. The performances by all are outstanding, even in the smaller parts. What a shame about Hoffman. He had an unpretentious puss and a tubby body and he gave the rest of us acting lessons.