The Descendants Review - by The Film Informant

The Hawaiian Movie

“The Descendants”

By The Film Informant

Matt King (George Clooney) lives up to his name in Alexander Payne’s new film, “The Descendants.” A Hawaiian lawyer struggling to find himself – amongst others – King enters Payne’s pantheon of wayward, middle-class American men. From Miles Raymond, the wine-guzzling neurotic in “Sideways,” to Warren Schmidt, the stupefied septuagenarian in “About Schmidt,” they’ve all got one thing in common – a crisis, or as King puts it, life. King’s brand includes an unfaithful, comatose wife – as capable of conversation as the framed black & white ancestors who decorate the walls of his living room – and from those ancestors, a plot of paradise. Hundreds of acres of coastal Kauai handed down in a trust through generations stretching farther back than Hawaii’s statehood land in King’s lap. Penny pinched, his vast extended family wants to sell the plot, making them all royalty, but as chief trustee the decision is King’s, and its impact will send waves across the land.

The 50th state is the paramount character in Payne’s film – if “Sideways” is the wine movie then this is the Hawaiian one. Payne and his cinematographer, Phedon Papamichael, harness the land, planting their lens with tropical vegetation, crystal oceans and scant clouds. But more memorable is Payne’s portrait of the state’s quirky sartorial tradition. As designed by Wendy Chuck, Payne’s longtime collaborator, the costumes are subtle, but allowed to make fun of themselves when, in a couple brilliant moments, Payne packs his frame with a kaleidoscope of Hawaiian-chic. He lends the same understated wit to Hawaii’s social interconnectedness. King isn’t surprised to accidentally run into distant cousins and friends at the airport, in a bar, or on the beach – apparently not uncommon in Hawaii, a place where someone’s cousin knows everyone. Cleverly, Payne, with co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, adapting from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel, also use this phenomenon to drive plot.

After a Jet Ski accident King’s wife falls into a coma, the dire consequence of her need-for-speed-boats, party-girl lifestyle. Thusly King finds himself at the helm not only of his extended family’s financial fate, but also, more acutely, of his immediate family – namely, two daughters. A self-described “back-up parent,” this is King’s real challenge, and it’s only compounded when his older daughter belatedly reveals that his wife was having an affair before the accident, with, as it turns out, a man who’s integrally connected to the sale of King’s land.

But Clooney, whose star powers lend themselves to presidential candidates, casino thieves, and Batman, is too dashing for Payne, nothing if not a quirkophile. The actor’s veteran chops aren’t in vain here by any stretch – he gives one of the most intimate performances of his career. But however ordinary his clothes, slouched his comportment, or ungainly he takes a corner loafer-clad at a dead heat, this Hollywood cosmo can’t shed his Cloony-ness and hit the idiosyncrasies intrinsic to Payne’s style. I couldn’t help but wonder, what if it were Giamatti?

Indeed, a native Hawaiian mother who shows up for a fleeting moment early on and makes for one of the movie’s best laughs is the only character in “The Descendants” reminiscent of the offbeats who usually populate Payne’s films. From King’s impressionable tweenage daughter (Amara Miller) to his rebellious teenage one (Shailene Woodley) to the latter’s repugnant boyfriend (Nick Krause) who slowly grows on King and us, the people of “The Descendants” are, for Payne, abnormally normal.

Though the Hawaiian movie isn’t as tannic and full-bodied as the wine one, even a lesser Payne film is a charmer. The director seems right at home in paradise. As with California wine country, he mixes the banal and the beautiful of Hawaii to create the perfect foil for a bourgeois implosion. To paraphrase King, who narrates, just because Hawaiians live in paradise doesn’t mean they’re immune to life — i.e., crisis.