Film review: The Descendants
MANILA, Philippines - It is George Clooney’s voice and a dash of irony that introduces The Descendants. Hawaii, he says, is not the island paradise it is touted to be. In fact, it also has a seamy side, one that is mired in squalor where the homeless roam.
Strange for director Alexander Payne to introduce the movie this way. His main character Matt King (George) looks like paradise and lives in it. He is a real estate lawyer descended from Hawaiian royalty. His family even owns a big chunk of the paradise. He also has an attractive wife and two beautiful daughters.
As the story unfolds though, it becomes clear why Payne chose to show the hidden ugly side of paradise. Matt’s family’s hold on the prime piece of property will expire in seven years. They have to sell now if they want to make money out of it. But Matt loves the land and wants to keep off the developers. So he is hesitating about the sale and his relatives are not happy about that.
For another, Matt’s family is also collapsing and he feels unable to hold it together. His wife has met a boating accident and now lies in coma. As per her will, Matt is tasked with pulling the plug. So the former back-up parent has now to deal alone with death, two confused, resentful daughters whom he hardly knows and his annoying relatives.
To top it all, his older daughter has dropped a big bomb. Her mother had been having an affair and was planning to get a divorce. What does Matt do with this revelation? As his world crumbles, he goes off, daughters in tow, in search of his wife’s lover.
George here reminds me of a headless chicken, going any which way because he is unable or refuses to see the way to go. It is a tragic situation but as with how people deal with such in real life, it can also be very funny. It makes me think of how we would be talking about Matt King had he been our neighbor. Poor Matt and in the next breath, but have you heard…
Payne nails this right and tight. This is how we face up to calamities, deaths in the family, even heartbreak. We are often too shy or too broken to cry. So we lighten things up with a joke, an angry jab at the sentimental or a well-placed punch while waiting for the healing to take place.
It is so graceful the way Payne goes through all these in an unhurried pace, opening things little by little, much like the way a tourist with time and money would savor Hawaii. Slowly the characters change. They grow, or get shown up or accept that living comes with compromise.
It is Matt who does most of the growing up. The Descendants is in a way his coming-of-age-story journey that is not pleasant but unavoidable. Forced to leave his comfort zone, confronted with the exigency of time, he is at first disoriented but ends up, in a way, triumphant.
Payne has done this well before in About Schmidt and Sideways. He has this way of getting inside the psyche of middle-aged men, shaking them up a bit before letting them go their way. The tale is always funny, sad and real. These are movies running on TV and you quickly press the remote button to go to another channel. No sense letting your gut go through that again.
Whatever enjoyment can be had out of The Descendants does not come out of watching how King gets his problems resolved. It is in seeing how Payne masterfully put together this mix of drama and comedy that is so endearing but also a silent but heart-piercing cry.
George despite his destructing good looks helps make it so. He is such a bundle of emotions as Matt and he makes the mix of strength and indecisiveness so natural. You feel for him but know he should have done better. That George is terrific in the part shows a gift rarely found in successful leading men. It is a generosity of spirit that makes him wonderful to watch.
Had he been a lesser star, The Descendants would be touted around as an ensemble piece. That is what it really is because everybody here turns in a brilliant performance. Again this is a tribute to Payne, who made such excellent choices.
Beau Bridges as Matt’s bad guy cousin; Robert Forster as his angry father in law; Nick Krause as his daughter’s always stoned boyfriend; and as the two girls, 10-year-old Amara Miller as the morbid Scotti who brought pictures of her comatose mother to school for show and tell and 17-year-old Shailene Woodley, as Amanda, who is a handful and had been shipped off to boarding school; and other actors who became readily recognizable characters of joys and sorrows.
Of course, there is also Hawaii, which Payne shows off as troubled but always beautiful. As King’s story says, times have changed. It is not Presley’s blue Hawaii but it is still every bit a star.