Savages

The first American film from Merchant Ivory Productions is a fascinating meditation on the rise and fall of civilizations, with a witty screenplay by George Swift Trow and Michael O’Donoghue. Savages is filmed in an improvisatory, experimental style and merges a series of tragicomic tableaux with pseudo-scholarly documentary narration and title cards. A masked, naked, clay-covered band of jungle primitives are disturbed in the middle of a human sacrifice by the sudden intrusion of a croquet ball. Led by their high priestess, they trek through the forest in search of its origins and arrive at an immense, deserted manor house. They occupy the mansion, which begins to have a civilizing effect on them; individual personalities emerge, and with them, pasts, futures, family connections, ambitions, and other trappings of society. Savages is a dark, biting satire that will turn viewer expectations upside-down.