Running Time: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Alexander Payne
Quick Impressions:
The Descendants is a great movie but an incredibly sad one. I had tears in my eyes through pretty much the entire thing, ready to cry in almost every scene, and I couldn’t have been the only one. I heard a lot of sniffling around me.
The Good:
Before seeing the film, I’d heard lots of people raving about Clooney’s performance. Now I see why. He’s actually allowed to give a performance. Strangely, many of the films released so far this year do not feature a strong leading male character who is allowed to grow and express a wide range of emotions on screen. Usually, there are plenty of films like this. Actresses are the ones who ordinarily get short-changed. But there really haven’t been a lot of strong male performances this year or scripts that allowed for them.
Like Brad Pitt in Moneyball and Leonardo DiCaprio in J. Edgar, Clooney has a good part in The Descendants. (Ryan Gosling is fantastic in Drive, too, but he plays a character who never expresses himself verbally, which makes it harder for the audience to connect with him.) Of course, when you give an actor such a choice role, you have to have confidence in his ability to carry the movie. So Clooney has a good part and rises to fulfill its challenges.
He’s extremely convincing as Matt King (a character who seems quite antithetical to his off-screen persona, except perhaps in the having a family legacy department).
What I love about the role is that even though it allows him to express profound sadness and frustration, King doesn’t just run around crying the entire time (though he does run around a lot.) It’s the best acting I’ve ever seen from George Clooney. I’ve seen so many performances where he plays the cool guy who’s starting to get seriously angry. The character of Matt King has more depth, more nuance, more vulnerability.
Also, the young actors in the movie are fantastic, particularly Shailene Woodley. The scenery is beautiful. The story is compelling. The screenplay is well written. The music is soothing. And you get to see really solid dramatic turns by Matthew Lillard and Judy Greer.
Best Scene:
In the final scene of the film, Clooney’s Matt King and his children share a blanket and ice cream on the couch while watching March of the Penguins. Anyone who has seen March of the Penguins or knows anything about the reproductive habits of penguins should appreciate the moving visual metaphor. This beautiful, carefully constructed scene leaves viewers with a sense of hope and a feeling that the King family will weather life’s storms and remain intact.
Best Surprises:
Two of the moist poignant moments in The Descendants come in the form of surprises. I love the scene when Matt makes sure Alexandra’s friend Sid is still on the couch in the middle of the night. Matt and Sid’s conversation makes Matt and the audience suddenly come to view the young man in a different light.
Another incredibly powerful and somewhat unexpected moment comes near the end of the movie when Elizabeth gets her final non-family visitor.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (George Clooney):
What makes Clooney’s performance Oscar worthy is the way he carries the movie by completely inhabiting the character of Matt King from start to finish, but some of his strongest work comes in the scene when he runs around the block to the home of his wife’s best friend to break bad news and demand answers. Clooney runs a lot in this movie, but he always runs toward difficult situations instead of running away from them. The anger and frustration he displays when confronting his wife’s best friend is so different from his usual, “I’m mad and cold as ice and George Clooney” moments of controlled rage that it deserves some attention.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Shailene Woodley):
Woodley gives an intense and focused performance as the Kings’ older daughter, Alexandra. She makes the character both relatable and interesting throughout the movie, but an early turning point in her character’s behavior comes when her father breaks the bad news to her while she’s in the family’s dirty swimming pool.
The Other Performances:
Amara Miller doesn’t have a meaty enough part to get any kind of award or nomination, but she’s pretty great as the Kings’ younger daughter, Scottie, who manages to be rude, vulgar and heart-breakingly innocent all at once.
Nick Krause is also good as Sid, a character it’s easy to hate until he becomes impossible not to love.
Robert Forster plays Matt’s father-in-law commendably. He’s a character who evokes pity and rage in equal parts and gives Matt a wonderful opportunity to behave well, despite being provoked.
I enjoyed getting to see Beau Bridges as Cousin Hugh. Jeff Bridges has gotten a lot of (deserved) attention in the past few years, but his older brother seems to show up in fewer and fewer feature films. He plays the apparently laid back but potentially formidable Cousin Hugh perfectly, conveying a hint of menace that brings an electrifying tension to all his scenes.
When I saw Matthew Lillard’s face on a real estate sign, I couldn’t believe my eyes. He’s not a guy who gets much high profile work these days, but I’ve always liked him, and he’s quite good as the somewhat despicable Brian Speer.
I love Judy Greer and was pleased to see her with such a substantial, dramatic role. Her final scene was one of the most moving parts of the movie.
The Negatives:
The only thing that I didn’t like about this movie is that the wife is given no voice to speak for herself. She certainly comes across as a self-centered, reckless, selfish person, and that’s probably not a fair impression to have of her. I realize that the relationship between a mother and her teenaged daughter is almost always tense, but Elizabeth’s daughter Alexandra has a legitimate grievance against hers. People make mistakes, of course, and Matt admits that he’s been a distant husband, but it’s just bad parenting to put your daughter into Alexandra’s predicament knowingly. It’s a shame that we got to see so little of Elizabeth alive and well. We really have no idea what was going on in her head. We only know what other people thought about her.
[Light spoilers] When it comes to the family trust, Matt’s decision seems like the right one, but his motivations are so troublingly ambiguous. The movie leaves us with the disquieting feeling that Elizabeth King did one good thing. She died. By dying, she spared herself some heartache, and she prompted her husband to step back and reassess what he values in life. Matt makes consistently good decisions as a now single parent. Still it’s troubling that Elizabeth inspired this wake-up call but lacked the good fortune to have one of her own. She will never wake up. Her death seems so tragic. I found myself feeling sorry for her precisely because I didn’t feel sorry for her. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing about the movie, but it definitely feels bad.
Overall:
Despite being continuously sad and intense, The Descendants leaves viewers feeling some hope. At heart, it’s really a movie about the strength of family ties, and despite Matt’s worry (or perhaps because of it), the King family seems incredibly strong and healthy as the final credits roll (or rather flash across the screen so quickly that it’s impossible to read them all).
George Clooney and Shailene Woodley should get Oscar nominations. And I’d be incredibly surprised not to see nominations for best director, best picture, and (especially) best screenplay as well.