Another excellent addition from the master chronicler of middle aged men in crisis, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants sweeps the viewer away with its beautiful Hawaiian vistas and playful ukulele music, all the while breaking our heart with the sad situation of the King family. A grittier—and probably more realistic—version of Hawaii is presented, with frequently cloudy skies, dirty pools, and fake smiles. This is no Mary-Kate and Ashley’s Hawaiian Beach Party.
Watching the film, for the first time in my life I felt sorry for George Clooney. He plays Matt King, a man whose life is absolutely perfect—at least from a bird’s-eye-view. He’s a successful lawyer, a family man, and the sole trustee of a parcel of much-desired tropical property that could replenish his family’s coffers several hundred million times over.
But dig a little deeper and everything around him is falling apart. His wife was in a boating accident and is now in a coma. His youngest daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller) is a foulmouthed and impressionable bully. His oldest daughter, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) is an institutionalized drug addict with a thing for dumb older men, especially a friend named Sid (Nick Krause).
If his immediate family wasn’t trouble enough, King’s extended family has been giving him grief about the sale of their family land, from which they stand to profit greatly. The revelation that his now-comatose wife was cheating on him sets King off on a cross-island journey to confront the home-wrecker and bring a sense of closure to his overlapping crises.
Clooney is remarkable playing a man trying his best despite being totally ill-equipped and unprepared for the hell-storm he inherits. He is a man who never wanted responsibility, either for his kids or for the large amount of land he is entrusted with. But through the course of the movie he grows from being a terrible father to being someone in control of his emotions and his destiny.
The children are breakthroughs. King’s two daughters and Sid are all deeply flawed human beings, but they have wonderful moments where both their hurt and steely resolve shine through. Woodley’s take on Alexandra is especially impressive—as the teenager who, despite her own problems, holds her family together, she is the true moral center of the film. Sid also stands out as someone whose political incorrectness is both hilarious and appalling. But a nighttime chat with Clooney reveals his own struggles, proving that it never hurts to be a little empathetic.
Payne is a natural at chronicling older men in crisis. In movies like Election, About Schmidt, and now The Descendants, characters who have tried to do the right thing all their lives are confronted with the stark reality that the world is a little bit more cynical than they had imagined, and it comes time for them to cope. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a mid-life Bar Mitzvah, and Payne captures the struggles, transformations, and oftentimes near transformations very well.
Without spoiling too much, The Descendants can be viewed as a softening of Payne’s sharp bite, as Clooney’s character has his heart in the right place. In the end, the film is an extremely satisfying depiction of heartfelt, well-written characters struggling with the weightiest issues of all: death, family, and prime real estate.
