George Clooney seems to have made a career out of making unlikable people likable. Danny Ocean of the Ocean's films, for example, has repeatedly engaged in grand-scale larceny, Ryan Bingham of Up in the Air traveled around America telling people they were fired and giving seminars on why people should go through life without any emotional attachments to anyone, and in his latest movie, Alexander Payne's The Descendants, he plays Matt King, a Hawaii-based real-estate lawyer and sole trustee of an enormous tract property who is apparently so wrapped up in his work that he has pretty much neglected his family altogether. As a result, his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), gets hooked on motorcycles, speedboats, and dangerous living in general, his seventeen-year-old daughter Alex (Shailene Woodley) turns into a bit of a wild child partying it up while away at her expensive boarding schools, and his ten-year-old daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) has developed a bit of a potty mouth.
As the movie opens Matt has quite a bit to deal with; due to a newly-passed Hawaiian law against owning large tracts of land in perpetuity he and his family now have seven years to sell the 25,000 acres of untouched land that has been in their family since the 1860s. He and his cousins have been looking at buyers, but for some reason that is not explained it is Matt's vote as the sole trustee that truly counts. His wife has been involved in a boating accident and as a result is comatose. It isn't long before Elizabeth's doctor breaks the bad news to Matt; she isn't going to make it. It now falls on Matt to break the news to everyone else, like friends and family, and the first person he decides to tell is Alex, whom he and Scottie fetch from her expensive boarding school on the Hawaiian mainland. His strained relationship is a hard enough pill to swallow, but when he breaks the news to her she, in shock, hits him with a bombshell of her own; Elizabeth was having an affair. After twisting the arms of a couple of Elizabeth's friends, Matt learns that the affair was with a realtor named Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), and upon learning where he'll be staying for the weekend he sets off in search of him, with his two daughters in tow. The journey proves to be a revealing one in ways not even Matt imagined.
As Matt deals with both impending loss, infidelity, and possibly the most important decision he will ever have to make, he discovers a lot about himself, his family and what he really values in life.
I was wondering aloud when Alexander Payne would make a movie again when I stumbled on this movie doing a Google search. This was before the slew of awards nominations came out; I was just happy that the writer/director of one of my all-time favorite movies, Sideways, was working again.
The film represents quite a departure for Payne stylistically; unlike the working-class schlubs played by Matthew Broderick (Election), Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Paul Giamatti (Sideways) in Payne's last three films, Clooney's Matt King is an aristocrat through and through. The guy was basically born into a family fortune and is a highly successful lawyer to boot. There's not a whole lot of everyman anguish going around here, but Payne's and Clooney's strength lies is how they are able to portray King as a sympathetic character, one it is actually possible to pity in spite of everything he has going for him. There's a bit of sentimentality involved, but considering the abrupt nature of the events in the story it's a little natural that the characters, even the somewhat more cynical ones, are caught a bit off their guard.
Still, though the characters are removed from Payne's norm, his signature is all over this film, particularly in the way he is able to inject humor into even the most depressing of situations. And of course, Payne is able to get the very best out of his actors, whether it's the known ones or the somewhat obscure ones. A good example is the young actor who portrays Alex's is-he-or-isn't-he-her-boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause) a young man who isn't terribly bright or well-versed in social skills, and who is constant companion to Matt and his family for a good chunk of the film. I have no idea if this character is present in the book on which this film was based, but it seems that it is in him that Payne has found his ordinary schlub in this world of heirs and scions. That he has a kind of, um, homely look to him kind of balances out Clooney's leading-man looks and Alex's somewhat ethereal beauty. Veteran actors Robert Forster and Beau Bridges also make notable and memorable appearances as Elizabeth's father and Matt's cousin, respectively. Lillard's appearance is brief but significant, as is that of Judy Greer, who's always a welcome sight in my book.
The Descendants does not even come close to displacing Sideways as one of my all-time favorite movies, but it is definitely a very affecting film and certainly one of the best I've seen all year.
5/5
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