FilmSlashTV: ‘Descendants’ is deceptively breezy

George Clooney and Shailene Woodley facing future in "The Descendants." (Courtesy Fox Searchlight)

REVIEW BY BURL BURLINGAME / bburlingame@staradvertiser.com

It takes us all, death does, but we don’t have to much care for it. And so, when “back-up parent” Matt King’s wife is bashed into a coma, he reluctantly, but responsibly, takes over the raising of their two teenage girls.

Responsibility is the key word. Matt approaches everything as if it is a necessary chore. He is a responsible person, but he is emotionally disengaged. You’re not surprised to discover that he is a lawyer.

The girls are bright, troubled Alexandra, off in a boarding school and on the cusp of womanhood, and tween-age Scottie, just on the brink of pubescence and teetering there like she’s on a high-diving board. They are a handful, and Matt admits right out that he’s baffled by parenthood. He doggedly makes an effort, however, doing the dutiful, responsible thing.

The Kings are an old-line kamaaina family that actually has royal Hawaiian blood and property, although the Hawaiian side is getting more haole as the generations roll on. The time has come to divest the family’s land-grant inheritance, 25,000 gorgeous acres on Kauai. As executor of the family trust, it’s up to Matt to choose a buyer make his land-rich, cash-poor relatives instant millionaires.

More responsibility, which Matt handles in his nose-to-the grindstone style. It’s expected of him, so he will do it. Matt is supposed to be the adult in the room. The Kings are as close to royalty as we get in this country, and in an isolated, social petri dish like Hawaii, everyone pays attention.

And then Alexandra throws a monkey wrench into the works. Her mother, Matt’s comatose wife, was having an affair at the time of her accident. Matt’s not sure how to react. He’s not used to taking the lead. “The Descendants” at this point takes us on a kind of wonderful journey through the shifting landscape of human emotion, ranging from deliciously awkward comedy to heartfelt, transformational tragedy and all points in between. The superb thing about “The Descendants” is that it treats all stations equally. It’s a movie that is delighted about the messiness of human impulses, and the miracle of it is that it maintains the juggling act with such transparent skill. Tough times and heartbreak not only call for desperate measure, they require warmth and acceptance.

The movie is deceptively breezy, which defuses a cant toward hyper-sensitivity. Everyone in it, like everyone you know in real life, can be both loutish and lovable. Since we’re kept guessing on the direction, it’s not until the final act when we realize we’ve become vested in the characters.

Since the subtext is clearly chockablock with the notion of creating legacies — it’s called “The Descendants” for a reason — we’re focused on the navigation hazards thrown up by the family’s situation, down to things as simple as Matt’s clumsy, frenzied dash through a rainy Nuuanu neighborhood. We’re not sure if he’s running away from home or running toward a needed confrontation, but we absolutely, intuitively, understand the need to run, run and run. It’s doing something, anything.

After his initial anger over his wife’s infidelities, Matt is consumed with something even more dangerous — curiosity. He can’t communicate with his wife, as she sinks into oblivion, so the movie becomes something of a ragged detective story, and Matt’s daughter and her smirking-moron semi-boyfriend catch the fever.

It’s a way of acting out in the face of helplessness, and the movie never makes it seem like the characters are clockworks wound up by a by-the-numbers plotline. It’s messy and episodic and developments are illuminating as well as emotionally complex. There’s nothing simple in this simple story. Well, maybe one thing. It is a movie, after all, and it’s inevitable that the twin plot lines of past cuckolding and future land sales will intertwine. They do. The way Matt handles both, with one decisive stroke that is out of character — but which we’ve seen building, so it feels like victory — isn’t exactly brilliant, and guarantees future problems, but hey, life is like that. Deal with it, man.

As Matt, George Clooney tamps down his considerable screen charisma in a lovely, understated performance that is squarely middle-aged. The showy role is Alexandra’s, played by Shailene Woodley, who manages to be the most believeable teenager we’re seen on screen in many a year, and her journey is as much a compete arc as her father’s. She’s both radiant and darkly emo. “The Descendants” has a character-rich verisimilitude that extends off the screen, and every part in the film, including the smallest, has a human impact, ranging from Robert Forster’s seething father-in-law — even his hairplugs seem angry — to the smallest of roles, like Kim Gennaula’s patient school counselor. “The Descendants” reminds us of how much movies seem to hate the human beings in them.

In Hawaii, we’re watching “The Descendants” with two halves of our brain. It’s set here in the islands — and it’s great to see a Hawaii movie set during rainy season, through the eyes of residents instead of tourists — and a large patch of the movie’s social contract are the Hawaiian notions of ‘aina, malama and pono. I think it’s a not-so-subtle point the movie making about life being tough all over, even in “paradise.”

Does the movie get Hawaii right? Although the King family may not look Hawaiian, they are the islanders of today, not yesterday. The Kings are in a social class that is not so much moneyed as privileged, and the movie is scrupulously accurate about the details. It’s almost anthropological, down to the deck shoes, the Pegge Hoppers on the walls, the cluttered frame homes with damp green yards and old books and glass floats on the shelves.

These folks look like every haole kamaaina I know. And every Punahou grad. For a Hawaii movie, it’s whitebread. On the other hand, it doesn’t haul out “colorful” local characters as jokes. That’s a blessing.

“The Descendants” could easily have been set elsewhere, without the same resonance. We’re glad it wasn’t. It joins the short list of Hawaii movies that aren’t embarrassing to screen for malahini.

What they’re saying:

We’re wired into “The Descendants” because it’s set in our backyard. But how is it being received abroad? The film is scoring above 90 percent on RottenTomatoes, with particular praise for Clooney’s textured performance and Woodley’s radiant angst. Here are some comments from reviewers elsewhere:

“The Descendants is the best movie of 2011. It is the movie of the year, in many ways beyond its simple superlative overall excellence.”
— MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher

“An emotionally ennobling film that wears its compassion on the sleeve of its ugly Hawaiian print shirts.”
— Duane Dudek, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“With so many balls in the air the temptation is to rush from one plot strand to another, but Payne takes the opposite approach. He also captures the complexity of emotional reactions that grief stirs.”
— Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

“I’m a notorious softie, and I found things to like about the film, most particularly Clooney’s performance; but I remained untouched.”
— Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine

“It left me cold. The pathos is as unearned as the protagonist’s privilege.”
— J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“Payne has a particular skill for making movie stars seem like normal people, and the resolute normalcy of the cast helps to show Hawaii not as a resort paradise, but as a place like any other where people live, work, love, and die.”
— Ian Buckwalter, DCist

“The balmy breezes and small-town intimacy of island life give ‘The Descendants’ a leisurely tone that distinguishes it from Payne’s more angry-edged work.”
— Alison Gang, San Diego Union-Tribune

“We get vested in the lives of these characters. That’s rare in a lot of movies. We come to understand how they think and care about what they decide.”
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“Payne has a gift for life’s messiness, the mash-ups of pain, humor, anger, terror, and longing that collide in the midst of big moments and domestic dailiness.”
— Nell Minow, Beliefnet

“It’s lovely – funny and sad and funny/sad in ways you can’t always pinpoint, capturing both the perpetual Pacific island breezes and the unsettled interior lives of Hemmings’ characters, chief among them the attorney played by George Clooney.”
— Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

“There are flashier directors working today, but Payne’s position at the forefront of contemporary filmmaking comes from telling richly human stories filled with wit, insight and unique charm.”
— Geoff Berkshire, Metromix.com

“‘The Descendants’ is one of the stranger and yet one of the more effective weepers in recent years.”
— Richard Roeper, RichardRoeper.com

“To call ‘The Descendants’ perfect would be a kind of insult, a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection. Its flaws are impossible to distinguish from its pleasures.”
— A.O. Scott, New York Times

“I can’t think of another movie this year that made me laugh or weep harder for the whole lumpy business of being – the compromises and connections that get us through the day and somehow add up to entire lives.”
— Ty Burr, Boston Globe

“It’s more straightforward and sentimental than most Payne films, and at times it lands very close to sitcom territory. But it also has scenes as wrenching and as true as any onscreen this year.”
— Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
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Burl Burlingame is a features reporter at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Email him at bburlingame@staradvertiser.com and follow him on Twitter.