David O'ConnellThe Descendants
January 8th 2012 23:12
I’m sure I haven't been alone, for the past seven years, in pining for a new Alexander Payne film. The uniformity of his past three projects - all solid gold classics - has been remarkable; each one, though the adaptation of source material, revealed a consistency of style and tone that's impossible to overlook when assessing his work.
Watch Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002) and Sideways (2004) back-to-back and the way in which Payne and his writing partner Jim Taylor colour the margins and populate their narratives with memorable secondary characters, prove signifiers of an obvious hallmark. All three remain masterful examples of bittersweet emotional journeys merging with wry black comedy.
In The Descendants (2011), successful Hawaiian lawyer Matt King (George Clooney) is experiencing severe turbulence. His wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), with whom he’s shared a strained, possibly failing relationship, is in a coma after a water-skiing accident. Left with two daughters in his care, the troublesome Scottie (Amara Miller), and her defiant older sibling, Alex (Shailene Woodley), Matt is essentially clueless, suddenly obliged to revise a rarely-utilised parental textbook that’s been badly translated from Sanskrit. Simultaneously, he has an enormous business decision on his plate, awaiting his attention. He and a multitude of his relatives are members of a trust that owns a huge slice of expiring land on the island of Kaua’i. With the trust running out, a decision is impending, with Matt ultimately the one upon whose shoulders the final call rests.
Payne’s latest gem, which he adapted from a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, is incredibly adept at charting a believable, humorous path through the minefield of Matt's altered domesticity. Perfection feels like an ideal that he'll never again be able to superimpose over his own life. In the wake of revelations about his marriage, the truth stings like an open wound; the ramifications, including a confrontation with his own various inadequacies, begin to engulf everyone left circling the comatose Elizabeth, the unconscious epicentre of the quake that sets the film in motion.
Though not working with usual co-scripter Jim Taylor (who has only a producing credit this time around), Payne once again finds a perfect narrative balance by conveying the perfect imbalance of human life and its unwanted, painful but inevitable entanglements. To avoid sentimentality when profound emotions are entered into the equation is no easy task but Payne's command of the material is faultless. This important American director has now successfully completed a quadrella of brilliant films with the subtly moving The Descendants.
As with his earlier works, the secondary characters are complementary in the most productive sense; some are entertainingly offbeat, whilst others provide objectivity in key moments of consternation, such as when a tidal wave of subjectivity threatens to blacken Matt or Alex‘s horizon. In this respect, Nic Krause is a highlight as Alex’s friend Sid, whose laidback nonchalance and propensity for speaking his mind rubs Matt up the wrong way initially. Then there’s the underutilised Robert Forster, another welcome addition to the cast as Elizabeth‘s grieving but pragmatic father.
Clooney’s presence in a film these days is almost a guarantee of quality. His discretionary powers have become infallible, leading to a string of top-notch films in the last two years alone, culminating most recently with The Ides of March (2011). Matt King is one of his finest characterisations; a man who appears to be coasting through life, but has been wearing blinkers, inattentive to the truths that have stealthily attached themselves to him. The ideal of Matt’s perfection may be spoiled forever but the compromises, tenderly reached by the film’s conclusion, are ones we can all relate to and, more importantly, believe in.
The Descendants opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday, January 12.
| 59 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I've been meaning to check this out. Big Payne fan (have you seen Hung?) and the script sounds promising from all I've heard.
Totally agree that Clooney has a brilliant eye for choosing his cinematic attachments.
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic