Some films operate on the tension between lots of little things. The Descendants, the new film by Greek-American director Alexander Payne, is different, relying on the collision of three big things. The first might be called the Vagaries of Life (or just ‘Life’s a Bitch’), the cumulative sadness of your wife being in a coma, your kids being out of control plus the sudden discovery that your dying spouse was in fact cheating on you. The second is Hawaii, both the concept of the ‘island paradise’ itself and lilting, carefree Hawaiian music on the soundtrack. And the third is George Clooney, his handsome face looking shocked and befuddled by the contrast between the former and the latter.
The Clooney Factor is a large part of why this is Payne’s best film yet (admittedly, I found the previous ones slightly overrated). In Sideways (2004) our middle-aged hero, played by Paul Giamatti, stole money from his mother’s purse, revealing himself as sad and pathetic; Clooney’s Matt King would never do something like that – not just because he’s one of the richest men in Hawaii, but also because he’s George Clooney. There’s a quiet nobility in the actor’s bearing that resists Payne’s worst characteristic, a tendency to pile on humiliations for his protagonists. Giamatti’s sad-sack persona couldn’t fight that; Jack Nicholson couldn’t fight it in About Schmidt (2002), because Nicholson is a dangerous actor (seeing him emasculated was no fun at all) – but when, for instance, Matt tells his daughter “Stay here!” and sets out to get to the bottom of things, you sense his firm, can-do George Clooney-ness, which is why it’s wryly funny when he then puts on the wrong shoes (a pair of flip-flops) and waddles off, looking foolish. A noisier actor (Nicholson, say) would’ve turned the scene to burlesque; a less likeable one would’ve made the joke too harsh. Clooney, however, is perfect.
Matt has a number of problems. His wife, of course; his delinquent daughters, 17-year-old Alex and 10-year-old Scotty (“What is it,” he wonders in voice-over, “that makes the women in my life want to destroy themselves?”); his bullying father-in-law; Alex’s bumptious teenage friend Sid; and a tract of virgin land owned by his family, which is due to be sold in a few days. The last-named seems the least personal, yet it’s actually central to Matt’s malaise – because his relationship with Hawaii is as fraught and dysfunctional as any of his family relationships. In fact (he explains) his family is a lot like Hawaii, an archipelago of disparate islands drifting away from each other. They’re the Descendants, heirs to a fortune, owning vast chunks of land even though they can’t even speak the local language. Early on, Scotty has a fight with an ethnic-Hawaiian classmate, whose angry mother calls Matt to complain; “You can’t buy your way out of this,” says the mother bitterly, full of resentment at the rich intruder who’s taken and never given back.
The ending – Matt’s final decision – allows him to make peace with Hawaii, though Payne arranges it so there’s also another, less noble motive for his actions (saying more would spoil it). The plot has Matt, accompanied by his daughters and Sid, going off to find his wife’s illicit lover – but in fact the plot rambles, which is surely deliberate.
That’s the oddest aspect of The Descendants, and the reason why the film might bore some people: it seems consciously suppressed, almost un-dramatic. Critics have charged it’s more sentimental than Payne’s previous work but in fact it’s more wistful, as if its mind were on other things. Scenes that seem painful on paper (e.g. having to break the news to Scotty that her mother is dying) are disposed of with nary a ripple. The film is consistently gentler than expected, and more anti-climactic. It’s a puzzling strategy – yet in fact, by playing down the small inter-personal dramas, it highlights the large cosmic drama in the background, the intractable spectre of Death and desperate need for connection (Matt, we’re told, has never been good with his feelings). Payne’s debut Citizen Ruth (1996) was the archetypal film with lots of little things, but this – as already mentioned – is a film with a handful of artfully-arranged big things, rubbing and sliding against each other like tectonic plates. The result is wry and wrenching, like a Larry McMurtry novel, gently philosophical and deeply moving.
In the end, Life is both very simple and inexplicable: “Everything just happens”. Again and again in The Descendants, characters use the comatose woman as a sounding-board, because only with a silent target can they really let loose; dealing with normal people is too slippery – everyone has two sides, nothing stays the same. Sid, it turns out, is a chess player; the wife’s secret lover isn’t a bad guy. People are selfish and insensitive, then they surprise you. The father-in-law snipes at Matt, and the two teens suddenly spring to his defence – a lovely moment that just happens, unacknowledged, and then it’s over. The father-in-law leans over his daughter, stops for a moment in pain and confusion (as if to say ‘What’s the point?’), then gently kisses the living corpse.
Maybe it’s the setting that makes this Payne’s most poignant film for a Cypriot audience (Hawaii is much closer to our own reality than the Midwest or Napa Valley), but I think it’s more than that. It’s as though, by retreating into simpler, almost TV-movie plotting, he’s cleared out the clutter and brought out the big guns, the eternal verities (death, love, the promise of happiness) behind his slippery people. The Descendants uses plot as evasion technique, then deflates it to bring its hero slightly closer to true understanding. The final shot gives so little – a shared moment, and a moment of sharing – and makes it feel like a lot. I’ve seen it twice now, and both times just the placing of the final credit (“Directed by Alexander Payne”, coming a smidgen before you’d expect it) made me burst into grateful tears.
DIRECTED BY Alexander Payne
STARRING George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller
US 2011 115 mins.
