Sonic Cinema

Sounds, Visions and Insights by Brian Skutle

The Descendants

Grade : A Year : 2011 Director : Alexander Payne Running Time : 1hr 55min Genre : ,
Movie review score
A

There’s such an overwhelming level of emotion by the end of “The Descendants” that it makes it difficult for me to keep from giving the new film by Alexander Payne my highest rating. But in adapting the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings with his co-writers, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, there’s just a tad too much sitcom to really justify that “+” at the end of the rating.

All that being said, “The Descendants” marks one of Payne’s very best films, superior to his last two films (“About Schmidt” and “Sideways”), although maybe a tad bit behind his first two films (“Election” and his debut, the criminally underseen “Citizen Ruth”). Over the years, however, Payne’s gifts as a storyteller have flourished; no longer just the director of not so subtle satire, Payne has finally finessed his own blend of comedy and drama into a wholly satisfying emotional experience, which is critical to this film’s general success.

The film stars George Clooney, in perhaps his finest film work to date, as Matthew King, a real estate lawyer in Hawaii who has to make a couple of key decisions: the first is regarding a large amount of island property he and his cousins “own” as part of a trust from their family lineage; the second is regarding his wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), who was injured during a boating accident, and is now in a coma at a local hospital. The first one is easy going for Matthew, despite the differences between his cousins as to what to do with the land; on the other hand, Elizabeth’s comatose state means that for the first time, Matthew has to be the lead parent to their daughters, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley, a sassy and emotional wonder) and Scotti (Amara Miller, excellent as a wound-up ball of emotions let loose after tragedy), a task that becomes even more daunting when Matthew is told that there is nothing more that can be done for Elizabeth medically, and that the plug must be pulled. With his daughters in tow, Matthew must make the rounds to let his friends and family know that if anyone has any last goodbyes they wish to say to Elizabeth, the time is now.

Hawaii isn’t just the setting for the film; it’s almost its own character, as the evocative cinematography by Phedon Papamichael and the film soundtrack of classic and modern Hawaiian music makes clear. As Matthew says at one point, the islands that make up the state are very much like a family– part of the same whole, but separated by distances that become bigger over time. Now, King must bring his own family with Elizabeth together in hopes of being able to keep these islands from drifting too far apart, figuratively speaking. That means earning Scotti and Alexandra’s trust; not easy when Scotti is at that precocious age (10, to be exact) where rebellion is in her genetic makeup, and Alexandra is away at boarding school, and harboring a secret of a possible love affair her mother was having. Still, Matthew manages with some unlikely help from Sid (Nick Krause, superb and capable of stealing scenes from under Clooney’s nose), Alexandra’s pothead boyfriend who knows a little about losing a parent. The ups and downs of life, and the damage secrets can inflict on a family, are at the heart of “The Descendants,” which is so thoughtfully crafted by Payne, and acted by his uniformly excellent cast (which includes Robert Forster as Elizabeth’s father; Matthew Lillard in an unexpectedly serious turn as a fellow realtor; and Judy Greer as Lillard’s wife), that even the minor lapses into sitcom are tempered by genuine warmth, wit, and feeling. I’m not sure if it’s quite the Oscar frontrunner people are making it out to be, but it certainly has many of the ingredients the Academy likes.

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