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In his characteristic way of illustrating the sharp contrasts of flawed people dealing with the most difficult situations, Alexander Payne adapts the Kaui Hart Hemmings novel, The Descendants by emphasizing the comical, devastating, and revealing moments that often occur all in the same breath. In About Schmidt it was Jack Nicholson’s cantankerous retiree. It was Matthew Broderick’s resentful teacher in Election. And in Sideways, it was Paul Giamatti’s middle-aged bumbling oenophile. This time around, in The Descendants, George Clooney’s Matt King gets the Payne portraiture of a man - neither hero nor anti-hero - left to grapple with some of the most difficult decisions in his life.
Matt is a middle-aged wealthy landowner living in Hawaii who confesses via voiceover to being a somewhat detached father to his two young daughters Alexandra (Shaileen Woodley) and Scottie (newcomer Amara Miller). While he admits to falling into the fortuitous luck of being the descendant of a white missionary who married a Hawaiian Princess (and subsequently left him and numerous cousins hundreds of acres of prime ocean-front Island property), Matt soon discovers that not all luck is of the happy variety when his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) falls into a coma after a tragic boating accident. Having never been too involved in family matters, Matt must now embark on a journey through unexplored territory by tending to his dying wife’s needs, while also reacquainting himself with his daughters. But this is an Alexander Payne movie. Surely things aren’t quite this simple, right?
Dovetailing into the journey of Matt’s attempt to reconnect with his daughters, is another one involving the family’s trek to Kauai on the hunt for Elizabeth’s unwitting lover, real estate agent Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard). Matt, so buried in his law practice, only learns of his wife’s infidelity via Alexandra’s confession of her prior knowledge of the affair. Not knowing who he is, where they’ll find him, or what they’ll do when they get there, the Kings set out to confront Speers hoping to gain some sort of closure or unifying gratification before they’re forced to pull the plug on the comatose Elizabeth.
Business matters also loom heavy in the form of the family trust, a vast parcel of waterfront land, which is set to expire soon. Naturally, many of Matt’s relatives and fellow benefactors are champing at the bit for the sale of the land to take place, while members of the local community want the land to remain in its natural state.
Payne’s brilliance with the way he unfurls his story comes from the same place he’s always found success: extracting unexpected humor from within the irony of normal people doing despicable things. But here he has a secret weapon in the form of George Clooney, who has that enigmatic ability to enhance any movie he's in. Like many of the classic actors from the golden age of film - Bogart, Stewart, and Gable - Clooney stands for something grander than his given role. Yet, in spite of his bigger than life persona, he always manages to ground his performance in reality. No different here. Completely aware of the failings beneath his Matt’s flower-shirted façade, Clooney displays a dark charm, tinged with a sense of self-loathing. It’s what makes Clooney approachable as an actor and loveable as a character.
Woodley, star of TV’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, is excellent here as well. Her Alexandra’s relationship with her dad is one a lot of kids will relate to from their own experiences. She loves her dad, but looks at him as the childish one in the relationship and has always felt she needed to take on a parenting relationship with him. Woodley also expertly handles the multi-colored shadings of Alex’s barrage of mixed feelings around her mother that are at once incredulous, angry, worried, sad, and freaked out. Woodley digs deep and delivers a polished, multi-faceted performance.
A strong sense of place has always been a hallmark of an Alexander Payne film, and it becomes even more central in The Descendants. Because of the way the Hawaiian setting is juxtaposed against the King family’s struggles, the visuals take on a major role in the film. But as is typical of Payne’s visual style, the film is distinctly unadorned, allowing the characters and their personal complications to carry the narrative forward.
The Descendants is a beautiful film, both visually and emotionally. Near perfect at times. Though it’s one of Payne’s most straightforward and approachable films, the rewards lie within the rich fabric of human beings interacting in a minefield of complicated moral quandaries. It’s not only a display of intricate grace, but also one of complex awkwardness.
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