There are certain things in life that supposedly get better with age: cheese, wine, and apparently George Clooney. I would say that there is greatness locked in this man, but it has taken him far too long to realize that he has got it. In the past five years he has done tremendous work as a writer, director and actor, but this role, Matt King, is where he shall leave his mark. It was a privilege to watch him.
As we gear up towards the Oscars there seems to be a general consensus that Best Picture will go to The Artist with Hugo close behind. This is an unfortunate scene I paint for I have discovered that The Descendants is quite possibly the best film of the year done by one of the most promising directors of our time, Alexander Payne (Sideways). There is not another film that I have seen from 2011 that was as thoughtful, touching, funny, heartbreaking, or as beautifully acted as this one.
It follows Matt, a busy and distant attorney, who has been contemplating who to sell 25,000 acres of untapped beauty on Hawaii, which he inherited from a long lineage of Hawaiian family members. His life does not stop, but rather lurches forward when his wife suffers a boating accident and falls into a coma. Suddenly Matt finds himself head parent, a role which he is ill-equipped to handle. His seventeen year old daughter, Alex (Shailene Woodley), is a druggy who likes her older men, and his younger daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller), is simply angry and testing the waters now that "the backup parent" is in charge.
To make matters worse, Matt learns that before her accident his wife had fallen in love with another man. It is this knowledge that leads Matt, his daughters, and Alex's stoner friend Sid on a sort of journey to find the man that has caused so much grief for all of them. This man was not the cause of his wife's accident, of course, but a man and two young girls on the verge of losing a part of their nuclear family do not need to know that the keystone of their family was on the verge of coming loose. It is a most unfortunate catalyst that throws these dysfunctional family members together, but they realize that none of them are strong enough to cope alone and must force a connection with each other.
There are so many levels of grief in this film that pile on top of one another until there could be no way that these unhappy characters could possibly deal with it anymore, but they lean on one another and finally a catharsis begins. It must begin. Time assuredly heals all wounds--even ones as large as this--but until time comes to do its work they survive by relying on the power of familial bonds. Love may not have been especially present at the beginning, but something more than tolerance is found by the end. There is much, much more that passes in this film, but the important thing about it is the journey through the unexpected twists and bumps in the road that these four people must cope with in order to navigate their way to a place in which happiness does not seem an unreachable point in the distance.
Payne, as we have seen in his earlier works, is a wizard at carefully piloting through the humorous and the tragic. This is a dramedy in its purest form. If there were not moments in which the audience could laugh this was would not be a pleasant experience to watch or, I suspect, to act in. Without the moments of very good comedy it would be a struggle to take a message away from this film. For who wants to deal with a life or death situation in which all of the characters have irreconcilable flaws and simply exist in a state of wallowing misery? At least in the way that Payne has tackled the tough topics that he does there is humanity, and there is a strength given to his characters which shows them capable of making it through their lowest of lows, and that is a comfort.
The acting in this film, like the superb script, is flawless. Clooney gives the best performance of the year, and of his career. I think that audience members will be moved to see a character who honestly tries to be a good person. He struggles to better himself, but it's the fact that he tries and eventually learns from his mistakes that he is likable. I wanted him to succeed--not at his confrontation, but succeed in forming a stronger family. His daughters respond to that struggle and through crisis they all grow. The arc is clear and it is magnificent. This is absolutely a must-watch film.
4/4
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