From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning Sideways, set in Hawaii, The Descendants is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family’s land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.
Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu-based lawyer and the sole trustee of a family trust that controls 25,000 acres of pristine land on the island of Kaua’i. The trust will expire in seven years because of the rule against perpetuities, so the King family has decided to sell the land to Kaua’i native Don Holitzer for development. Just before family members are ready to formally endorse the deal, which Matt favors, a boating accident near Waikīkī renders Matt’s wife, Elizabeth, comatose.
Matt and Elizabeth have two daughters, 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year-old Alex (Shailene Woodley). Matt is not very close to his daughters and refers to himself as the “back-up parent.” With Elizabeth in a coma at Queen’s Hospital, he is forced to confront Scottie’s inappropriate behavior with other children and Alex’s drinking.
Matt learns that Elizabeth will never awaken from her coma, which means that under the terms of her living will she must be disconnected shortly from life support. He tells Alex, but not Scottie, that Elizabeth will not recover and must be allowed to die. Alex tells her father that Elizabeth was having an affair at the time of the accident. Matt confronts two family friends, Kai and Mark, and learns that Elizabeth’s lover is Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard).
Matt decides to tell Brian that Elizabeth will soon be dead to give him a chance to visit her while she’s still alive. He discovers that Brian is a real estate agent currently vacationing on Kaua’i. After telling the family of Elizabeth’s terminal prognosis, Matt, along with the girls and Sid (Alex’s slacker friend), travels to Kaua’i to find Brian. The story later explores the worlds of Brian, Matt and Elizabeth on the terrains of love, betrayal and family.
At times, the script feels a little too on the button with its snack-pack of metaphors. There’s a scene in which Matt likens the islands around Hawaii to a family: distant yet clustered, “always drifting slowly apart”. Compared to say, the likes of Joanna Hogg, whose Archipelago tackled similar subjects earlier this year, these moments can leave Payne looking like Michael Bay. At times the pace sags, and the loose ends are either dropped out of view or too stiffly gift-wrapped.
Still, The Descendants, if not quite the Oscar sucker-punch many anticipated, is a drama of unusual nuance.It lingers, spawns thoughts, connections, as a great film ought. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another seven years for the next one.
Suffused with sadness and an overwhelming sense of melancholy, The Descendants explores yet another corner of Alexander Payne’s United States. It’s a cinematic country notable for the beauty of its landscapes and the exquisite anguish of its inhabitants.
Emotional indulgences aside, The Descendants resonates deeply. Matt King is forced to take a good, hard look in the mirror. He doesn’t necessarily like what he sees, and must wrestle with his darker inclinations on behalf of his family. Because without family (of some kind), what have you got?
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