Hawaii, best supporting actor in bunches of movies, co-stars as the backdrop for Alexander Payne's, "The Descendants." As is true with "Sideways," the setting may be decent to look at, but wherever broken humans roam (Hawaii and Napa Valley) there are usually fractured attempts at mending. Payne wastes no time making this clear. The movie opens with George Clooney, who stars as Matt King, descendant of Hawaii colonizers and Hawaiian royalty, gloomily talking over shots of an impoverished, inner-city Hawaii and crowded highways reminiscent of 'the 405' in L.A. The problems of the mainland, or any mainland, as Matt explains, are constantly present in Hawaii and obstinately butting heads with the mainland's perceived paradise. And, as anyone that has lived in L.A. knows, the 405 is a problem.
Payne's movies are exceptional because he is really good at showing that which pushes on a character and then how that character pushes back. In this emotional comedy, there is a lot of pushing and shoving, just as there is in the real world (the great emotional comedy).
The movie picks up with Matt King looking over briefs in his wife's hospital room. We learn that she is in a coma from a boating accident. Later at the family's beach club, Laird Hamilton, her friend that was driving the boat, just from his physical presence (not from his less than stellar acting), makes it clear that King's wife associated with folks and activities that were a little more exciting than Matt's real estate law and churlish tight-wad-ness. From this first of many moments in the hospital room, we see what's pushing on Clooney--a marriage marred with boredom.
We're then introduced to Scottie and Alexandra, King's daughters. As the doctors explain that his wife is going to die, King is left to explain to himself that he is going to have to explain this to his daughters. Scottie, 8, was raised by her mother. Alexandra, 17, was also raised by her mother, however, with 9 years on her sister, Alexandra grew to 'know' her mother and therefore has some real issues. After King retrieves a drunken Alexandra from boarding school, he gets the sobering news from his daughter that her mother, his comatose wife, was cheating on him. Payne makes these moments functional for his movies. Whenever the crises begin to pile, we get to meet more characters and laugh a bit. When the news broke, King immediately puts on his loafers and with a broken gait sprogs to a neighbor's house to square away some details concerning the heartbreaking news about his wife's affair and therein decides to break the heartbreaking news about his wife's imminent death to their friends, the neighbors. Many things are breaking because of what was already broken.
It is true that in the great emotional comedy there are no villains. Payne, in this emotional comedy keeps a similar theme. King's interactions with his wife's unsympathetic, asshole of a father are fair. Sid, Alexandra's stoner boyfriend is at first annoying and later endearing. Even the adulterer, Speer, garners enough respect to be given a civil going-over. At the least, Payne allows us to see where they are coming from. We may not like them, but we understand them. Payne is a true egalitarian director in this sense. Which is necessary for seamlessly aligning a second plot-line with the first.
As his wife is taken off of life support, King is having the life sucked out of him by a slew of greedy cousins. Among which is the affable Beau Bridges. In their flowered shirts they all seem decent enough. It's the fact that they are about to sell 500 million dollars worth of virgin forest to developers that makes them all seem like real scoundrels. The family inherited the land, the kids used to camp on it, and Matt is the executor of the estate. The family wants the money and all of Hawaii wants to save the land. Crises number two. Characters being pushed around. Matt having to explain more stuff to himself and more stuff to other people. Everyone, and this might be the common thread that holds it all together, is constantly having to explain stuff to themselves and others while having stuff explained to them.
No one is better at acting out these sorts of emotions than Clooney. We see him thinking and explaining and breaking and plotting his rebuttal. It's through his acting that the morality invoked by extreme circumstances becomes real. There is no formula for how to deal with greedy cousins, a dying-cheating wife, teenage daughters, unavailable fathers-in-law, and an entire state of people counting on you. Clooney does well to keep from exploding. He does even better at portraying the annoyance and dismalness of having no formula while trying to harness some real pain. Maybe morality, at least maybe for Payne, is simply about knowing how to act in fucked situations when you don't know how to act.
Payne makes the point that there is always only one answer and humans inherently know it the whole time. It's emotional and comedic to follow characters around as they chase what they already know. It delivers a blow when we can empathize with the shit pushing on characters. It's cathartic when there is a happy ending. Ice cream and couches are always sufficient props for such a thing.
"The Descendants" is a good movie.
