Film Savage Grace 2007 Lk21 [top] Jun 2026

Released in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival, Savage Grace immediately polarized audiences. Directed by Tom Kalin ( Swoon ) and written by Howard A. Rodman, the film chronicles the real-life Baekeland family—Brooks (Stephen Dillane), Barbara (Julianne Moore), and Antony Baekeland (Eddie Redmayne). The title ironically inverts the Catholic hymn “Amazing Grace,” suggesting that wealth and freedom (“savage grace”) lead not to salvation but to moral collapse. This paper argues that the film uses an elliptical, detached aesthetic to critique the performative nature of upper-class identity, culminating in the infamous matricide that ends Antony’s psychic unraveling.

The film spans three decades, beginning with the birth of Antony "Tony" Baekeland in 1946 and trailing the family through New York, Paris, Spain, and finally London. At its center is (played by a luminous Julianne Moore ), a social climber married to the remote and often cruel Brooks Baekeland ( Stephen Dillane ). Film Savage Grace 2007 Lk21

Julianne Moore delivers one of her most intense roles, capturing a woman who is simultaneously a victim of her class and a predator to her child. Eddie Redmayne, in an early breakout role, is hauntingly fragile as the unraveling Tony. Released in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival,