A boating accident has left Elizabeth on life support. Absentee husband and father Matt King (George Clooney) is suddenly forced to change his priorities to be at his wife’s bedside and care for their 10 year-old daughter, Scottie.
The problem is King knows little about parenting and even less about his daughter. A successful lawyer and sole trustee of an enormous piece of Hawai’i real estate passed on by many generations of his family, King is a workaholic.
As Matt King, George Clooney gives arguably his best performance to date. He is strong, vulnerable, confused, angry, hurt as he tries to play the hand of cards he has been dealt.
Not only must he deal with Scottie – and to do so he elicits the help of older daughter Alexandra, who has been packed off to a boarding school that deals with problem teenagers – but he is also in the middle of a major decision regarding the piece of land. With the trust due to be dissolved within seven years, he is being pressurised to sell to developers. The issue for Clooney is which bid to accept.
But the essential story within The Descendants is that of Clooney trying to reconnect with his daughters.
He quickly discovers that his wife was having an affair, Alexandra having found out and challenged her mother shortly before the accident. It is this relationship between father and elder daughter that is central to the film and which develops when King decides to find the ‘other man’.
In her first significant feature film role, Shailene Woodley almost steals the show.
Like Clooney, she goes through the gamut of emotions: angry with her mother for having the affair; guilty as the argument was the last conversation they had. Tough on the outside, soft and vulnerable on the inside, she is a young woman crying out for parental love and affection.
Clooney and Woodley share an amazing chemistry on screen and theirs is a completely believable father/daughter relationship. It is their journey we watch and support.
As a family drama, The Descendants is a slow-burner. It is also gently nuanced rather than an emotional potboiler. Matt King wants to give his wife’s lover a chance to say goodbye, not confront him.
It is the slow pacing and lack of emotional highs and lows that are the problems with the film. Whilst not looking for non-stop action or constant brow-beating, The Descendants becomes one dimensional: the superb performances are not enough to pull the film out of the mire of its own creation.
Personal rating: 2.5 stars
The Descendants
- Directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways, Before Schmidt)
- Written by Nat Faxon (Adopted – TV), Alexander Payne (I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Sideways), Jim Rash (Adopted, Saturday Night Live – bothTV)
- Produced by Jim Burke (Cedar Rapids, Walking Tall), Alexander Payne (Cedar Rapids, King of California), Jim Taylor (Cedar Rapids, Fork in the Road)
- Starring George Clooney (Syriana, Ocean’s 11), Shailene Woodley (Moola, The Secret Life of the American Teenager – TV), Amara Miller
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
