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| George Clooney (left), Shailene Woodley (middle) and Amara Miller star in "The Descendants." |
In “The Descendants”—director Alexander Payne's sad,
smart and wonderful chronicle of a family in crisis—George Clooney plays Matt
King, an attorney and husband living in Hawaii who learns that his wife, Elizabeth,
has been having an affair and was prepared to leave him.
Matt doesn't get the news from his wife, but from Alex
(Shailene Woodley), his cynical and detached 17-year-old daughter who is
plucked from boarding school early on in the film. There is one more daughter, 10-year-old
Scottie (Amara Miller), small and sensitive but, like her older sister, precocious
and feisty and sometimes overly crude. The family is brought together by an
emergency; Elizabeth is in the hospital with a serious head injury suffered
while water skiing. She’s in a coma and doctors inform Matt that she’s not
going to wake up.
Meanwhile, Matt is the lone trustee to a large,
lucrative swath of land on Kauai currently held in a trust. The trust is due to
expire and several of Matt’s relatives, like the affably duplicitous Cousin
Hugh (Beau Bridges), want him to sign the multimillion dollar rights over to a
developer. Despite the imminent payday, Matt isn’t so sure he wants to spoil
pristine land that’s been in the family for generations.
But much of what drives the film remains closer to home.
Alex acknowledges that her alienation largely has to do with the hurt in
learning of her mother’s deceit and unfaithfulness. Now, like her father, she
is forced to deal with this anger and betrayal in the midst of devastating
pain. Her mother will never have the opportunity to say she’s sorry, so the
family will have to decide on their own whether to forgive her.
Matt decides he needs to find Elizabeth’s cheating
sidekick—a slippery real estate agent named Brian (Matthew Lillard)—reasoning
that if he cared enough about Elizabeth to have an affair, he should care
enough to say goodbye. Matt also meets Brian’s wife, Julie (Judy Greer), and
the two seem to share a spark of chemistry even before any secrets are
revealed. In a lesser movie, Matt would pull a cheap stunt like sleeping with
Julie to get revenge on Brian. But “The Descendants” is more intelligent and
grown up.
As he showed in “Sideways” and “About Schmidt,” Alexander
Payne is strikingly efficacious at weaving subtle humor into intimate,
melancholy stories about infidelity and suffering. Although he’s drifted from
the darkly ironic, brilliantly funny satire of “Election,” Payne’s films have
become more naturalistic and human and few filmmakers are able to make you care
more about characters.
“The Descendants” was based on a novel by Kaui Hart
Hemmings. It’s a film filled with agonizing situations and painful revelations,
but even though the characters are sometimes roiling in confusion and frustration,
there’s never a hint of melodrama or overplaying, no formulaic outbursts or
clichéd subplots. Instead, conflicts are handled with patience and restraint.
When there is a moment of genuine emotional release,
Payne handles it masterfully, as is the case when Matt first informs Alex of
the grim prognosis of her mother. Alex is swimming outside in the pool. At this
point, she is still furious with her mother, but hasn’t contemplated the
specter of death. It’s the worst news of her young life.
Alex pauses and slowly sinks beneath the surface.
Payne’s camera goes underwater with her, where she clenches her hands tightly
against her face and begins to sob before swimming distraughtly towards the
other end of the pool. It’s a delirious, powerfully moving image—one of the
most heartbreaking in recent memory—and because of Payne’s direction and
Woodley’s performance, it’s also beautifully lyrical and positively exquisite.
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