"The Descendants"... what happens when a good plot and good acting get married
There is a reason 'The Descendants' keeps winning all sorts of awards. It is a good film, but more than that, it is good filmmaking... here is why.
I have been hard pressed to find George Clooney play anything other than Dr. Doug Ross, or, for that matter, Booker from 'Rosanne'; or, if you'd like to go back further, that guy with crazy hair on 'The Facts of Life" (you know, after Charlotte Ray left and Cloris Leachman came). He is always that guy, you know the one, the one Humphrey Bogart perfected. If they were to re-make 'The Big Sleep', I'd be shocked if anyone but Clooney were to play Marlowe. To me, he has never been terrible and never been brilliant. He has never been crazy, but also never been overly depressed. He is successful because he is a moderately attractive everyman with a house in Italy and jet setting pals. But none of that means he is not a good actor, and in 'The Descendants' all of his George-isms are on full throttle.
George plays a man who lives on Hawai'i, is the executor of an estate worth half a billion dollars and whose wife just was in a boating accident leaving her in a coma. As he navigates the waters of family responsibility, legal opportunity, social and political pressure and one mean S.O.B. of a father-in-law he also has to guide his two daughters through the painful realization that their mother will probably never wake up and the fact that he just learned that at the time of the accident she was, in fact, cheating on him.
Alexander Payne is a brilliant director and has now been added to my 'I'll see anything you direct' list. The same way he was able to make grapes about people (in "Sideways") and tell the story of a lonely man through his pursuit of the perfect vintage; so he is able to make land about people and tell the story of a lonely man through his pursuit of familial harmony and economic decision-making. It's so simple and so subtle. Once again our protagonist is stymied by the sexual exploits of a near and dear. In "Sideways" it was the best friend, in "The Descendants" it is the comatose wife.
Clooney's Matt is obsessed with finding out who this man was that his wife was seeing behind his back; and his eldest daughter, played touchingly by Shailene Woodley, shares his zeal as the two hop the islands in pursuit of Mr. Brian Steer. It is clear, to the viewer, that their passion is a mask to ward off the grief of knowing that the woman with whom they are so angry with will never wake up; and by confronting this man, they can somehow put to rest the loss of her.
In the landscape of movies and films, art house and pathetic attempts at drama; "The Descendants" will last, not just for what it says about nuclear families, but also what it says about family, land, ownership, right and privledge. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and, after decades of listening to others talk about the Emperor's new clothes with Georgie boy, I finally drank the koolaid.
I have been hard pressed to find George Clooney play anything other than Dr. Doug Ross, or, for that matter, Booker from 'Rosanne'; or, if you'd like to go back further, that guy with crazy hair on 'The Facts of Life" (you know, after Charlotte Ray left and Cloris Leachman came). He is always that guy, you know the one, the one Humphrey Bogart perfected. If they were to re-make 'The Big Sleep', I'd be shocked if anyone but Clooney were to play Marlowe. To me, he has never been terrible and never been brilliant. He has never been crazy, but also never been overly depressed. He is successful because he is a moderately attractive everyman with a house in Italy and jet setting pals. But none of that means he is not a good actor, and in 'The Descendants' all of his George-isms are on full throttle.
George plays a man who lives on Hawai'i, is the executor of an estate worth half a billion dollars and whose wife just was in a boating accident leaving her in a coma. As he navigates the waters of family responsibility, legal opportunity, social and political pressure and one mean S.O.B. of a father-in-law he also has to guide his two daughters through the painful realization that their mother will probably never wake up and the fact that he just learned that at the time of the accident she was, in fact, cheating on him.
Alexander Payne is a brilliant director and has now been added to my 'I'll see anything you direct' list. The same way he was able to make grapes about people (in "Sideways") and tell the story of a lonely man through his pursuit of the perfect vintage; so he is able to make land about people and tell the story of a lonely man through his pursuit of familial harmony and economic decision-making. It's so simple and so subtle. Once again our protagonist is stymied by the sexual exploits of a near and dear. In "Sideways" it was the best friend, in "The Descendants" it is the comatose wife.
Clooney's Matt is obsessed with finding out who this man was that his wife was seeing behind his back; and his eldest daughter, played touchingly by Shailene Woodley, shares his zeal as the two hop the islands in pursuit of Mr. Brian Steer. It is clear, to the viewer, that their passion is a mask to ward off the grief of knowing that the woman with whom they are so angry with will never wake up; and by confronting this man, they can somehow put to rest the loss of her.
In the landscape of movies and films, art house and pathetic attempts at drama; "The Descendants" will last, not just for what it says about nuclear families, but also what it says about family, land, ownership, right and privledge. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and, after decades of listening to others talk about the Emperor's new clothes with Georgie boy, I finally drank the koolaid.
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