George Clooney first became famous for his good looks and effortless charm, but over the last few years has emphatically broken that mould with a series of intelligent films. Clooney’s work of late is noticeable for his ability to combine an off-the-wall sense of humour with real emotional gravitas. The Descendants is vintage Clooney, a bubbly yet deep family drama, full of gritty moments and memorable characters.
Clooney plays Matt King, an emotionally distant and uninvolved husband and father whose life is thrown into turmoil when his thrill-seeking wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) ends up in a coma after a boating accident. Matt is a self-described ‘back-up parent’ who now has to deal with two angry teenage daughters, while deciding whether to sell a vast tract of land to a condo-building conglomerate. The land has been in his family for generations, and while he has a controlling share, his emotional bond to the property is being challenged by money-hungry relatives. In the midst of all of this turmoil, Matt finds out his wife was having an affair and becomes obsessed with tracking down her lover.
Director Alexander Payne charts a course through all this emotional mess with remarkable story-telling skill and a wry sense of humour. He brings the best out of all his actors as each and every character is lent significant weight and complexity. Matt’s father-in-law, Mr Thorson (Robert Speer), greedy cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges) and even the adulterer Brian (Matthew Lillard) all manage to transcend the stereotypes of their type of supporting role because we see the ‘greyness‘ of their underlying moral currents just as clearly as we do with Matt. We can empathise with them even if we don’t always support their decisions.
Similarly, Matt’s legal, family and emotional travails are impossible to neatly compartmentalise into little good and evil, right and wrong boxes. Only an actor of Clooney’s intelligence could get us to arrive at his conclusions by the end of the movie. The Descendants is an almost perfect blend of light-heartedness and real emotional drama. Neither the comedy nor the drama would have worked by themselves in this instance, but together they deliver an impactful yet breezy meditation on life, family and relationships.
Four stars out of five. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for language including some sexual references).