The Descendants: Payne’s Most Complete Film

The Descendents is Alexander Payne’s most complete film. It combines the best moments of pathos from About Schmidt with the laugh-out-loud situations that helped him win the Oscar for his work in Sideways. What we end up with is one of George Clooney’s finest performances in a film that expertly makes us alternately laugh and cry without ever feeling manipulated, sometimes all emotional responses happening within one small scene.

For being one of the biggest movie stars of his generation, Clooney is one hell of an actor. The two are not mutually exclusive qualities despite the evidence to the contrary. At least, no one told him that. While you can watch some actors taking “risky” roles trying to mix up their image (think Tom Cruise in Magnolia or Julia Roberts in Closer), it usually feels like you’re watching this matinee idol superstar doing an extra credit project. You can’t completely lose yourself in their performance. And while it’s nearly impossible to fully forget that this is the George Clooney, he absolutely embodies the role of Matt King, a mediocre-at-best husband and father of two girls who has no clue how to take over as the sole parent after his wife, Elizabeth, falls into a coma after a boating accident. He’s had fantastic roles and equally stellar performances over the years, and when people reflect back on his oeuvre, I fear this one may get passed over despite being one of his best overall. Yet, he’s nearly upstaged by his own onscreen daughter, Alexandra, played by Shailene Woodley, who will hopefully continue to take mature roles like this as she has all the talent in the world to avoid traditionally lame teen fare.

This is probably a good time to give a quick synopsis. Matt King lives on Oahu and is a distant descendent of the former Hawaiian king, which means that he, along with his numerous cousins, are all trustees of this massive plot of land on Kauai. He’s busy working on figuring out to whom they’re going to sell the property in order to avoid a messy split of the land to all the relatives, including flighty Cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges, who looks even more like his brother, Jeff, with his long hair). Needless to say, he has a lot on his plate even before his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) is knocked comatose, leaving him to look after his two daughters: 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year-old Alexandra. Alexandra starts off as a typical snotty adolescent who we first meet getting drunk at her boarding school, swearing, and displaying generally rebellious behavior toward figures of authority. But from the minute that Matt tells her the bad news that her mom will never wake up from her coma, Woodley knocks it out of the park, creating a loveable and realistic while sweetly odd sidekick for Matt as he tackles yet another personal issue (as if there weren’t enough): prior to the accident, Elizabeth was cheating on him.

As is typical Payne style, despite tackling emotionally taxing subject matter like the long, drawn-out death of a parent-slash-spouse, The Descendents finds the comedy in these situations, coming organically from the characters themselves, like Alexandra’s tagging-along friend, Sid (Nick Krause). Admittedly, at first, he feels like he was thrown in just for comic relief. Alexandra makes up some excuse that she won’t go around helping Matt tell all the family and friends the bad news about Elizabeth unless Sid comes with them and Matt relents because, well, he has no leverage in the situation and hasn’t exactly had a lot of practice as a dad. Sid then proceeds to say obnoxious things and exert zero social awareness, making for some funny moments but seemingly just for the sake of adding more humor to the situations. But, then there’s this amazing moment nestled in between bigger, more plot-driven scenes where Payne and co-screenwriters Nat Faxon and Jim Rash show how Sid’s more than what he seems to be on the surface. Surely this is the type of script that actors get with a sigh of relief that they’re finally reading something that creates real, three-dimensional characters who surprise us in all the right ways.

Shot in Hawaii, the film is gorgeous to watch. You can obviously think of far worse things to look at than the most pristine beaches and lush mountains when sitting in a theater for two hours. The languid yet never boring pacing fits with the cozy, relaxed island setting, making for one of the more enjoyable and fulfilling cinematic experiences of the season. Payne showed that thirty-something men can be funny and moving with Sideways. With The Descendents, he continues with that thread, only heading a bit further down the male timeline, tackling the perils of parenthood, adultery, and death with that same ability to touch on the laughs and the tears of regular life. What’s not to love?