The King family goes for more than just a run on the beach in Alexander Payne’s marvelous THE DESCENDANTS
THE DESCENDANTS (Alexander Payne, 2012)
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Based on the 2007 novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants is a masterfully made, beautifully told story of love, loss, and family, highlighted by a graceful, wonderfully nuanced performance by George Clooney. Clooney stars as Matt King, a successful Hawaiian lawyer whose wife (Patricia Hastie) has suffered a devastating water-skiing accident that has left her in a coma. King is suddenly forced to be both father and mother to his two daughters, the troubled Alex (Shailene Woodley), who is in college, and ten-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), something he admits in voice-over narration he is absolutely clueless about. Meanwhile, he is in the midst of deciding what to do with his family inheritance, an enormous plot of pristine beachfront property that his large group of cousins (including Michael Ontkean and Beau Bridges) wants to sell to a major developer. But his life is again turned upside down when he discovers that his marriage was not quite what he thought it had been, learning a secret about his wife that complicates things even further. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Clooney), Best Editing (Kevin Tent), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash), The Descendants never takes the easy way out. In his first film since 2004’s Sideways, Payne (Election, About Schmidt) avoids melodramatic clichés and obvious plot twists, instead creating intelligent scenes filled with complex emotions that continually defy expectations. Clooney gives one of the best performances of his career as King, a carefully measured, subtle portrayal that keeps the film firmly balanced, whether he is being shot from the front, his eyes both intensely thoughtful and painfully confused, or shown from the back, his shoulders barely steady, his head facing out into a whole new world. Payne often allows scenes to take place off-screen and behind closed doors, putting his faith in the audience, who will be well rewarded by putting their trust in him. The Descendants is another great success from Payne, one of Hollywood’s best, and most fascinating, storytellers.