Though The Descendants is about a father and his two daughters dealing with the affairs of the family’s dying matriarch, there’s no doubt that the film is just an acting showcase for George Clooney. To that effect, The Descendants can’t even be considered his best work since it requires very little of him, and the effect of his in-film acting combined with his narration negates the emotional heft that should come from a character-driven piece about a husband coming to terms with what his wife’s death means. The themes are strong and end up surpassing any other element of the film; they amount to a story about how well or poorly you can know someone that you share a home with, but where the characters could have been played by anyone and they’d be just as memorable.
Matt King (Clooney), a wealthy Hawaii landowner, has spent the last few weeks caring for his wife who has been in a coma since a head injury in a speedboat race. Her condition has steadily worsened and now doctors have told him it’s time to take her off life support, a decision he’ll have to break to his two daughters, the young Scottie (Amara Miller) and the teenaged Alexandra (Shailene Woodley). Try as he might, Matt can’t seem to get Alexandra to feel more than a few moments of remorse for her mother’s passing, and she reveals that it stems from a secret that she and a few select friends knew about her mother. The revelation sends Matt reeling and obsessed to find out more about his wife’s activities. He finds his answers, but what truly brings him comfort is how it brings him closer to his daughters.
In the pool of actors working today, Clooney consistently gives some of the best performances and chooses roles that challenge him. That’s a rare thing, and what’s even rarer is that without fail his choice of films is a string of critical darlings. The Descendants is a well-written and perfectly directed film in the hands of Alexander Payne (Sideways), the only place it falters is in the acting. Clooney can emote as well as any actor, but he fails in that regard here. At his most vulnerable moments in the film, Clooney may show something as a character, but when the voiceover chimes in, with what we assume has an all knowing view of the timeline, it’s stoic at best and flat at the worst. Even a man whose wife did to him what Matt’s did would react more than what we’re given in Clooney’s performance.
The daughters prove an even weaker link in the chain, though one more so than the other. Shailene Woodley’s character becomes one of the strongest players in the story thanks to her knowledge of what her mother was really up to. It’s information that puts her character ahead of the emotional arc of both Clooney’s Matt and Amara Miller’s Scottie, who’s at the complete opposite end. Woodley plays her part well jumping between anger and consolation, and having Nick Krause, who plays her dim-witted boyfriend Sid, as a comic foil makes her stronger. She’s the driving force behind the narrative and encourages the choices that takes the family of three (and Sid) from one point to the next. She might not be perfect in the role, but she’s good enough to be the most convincing character in the father-daughters dynamic.
Where the film goes off the rails and gets distracted is the inclusion of the Sid character. The film notion that people in emotionally turbulent times in their lives need morons to come along and utter words of wisdom has played out in every way imaginable, and it’s become very trite. In the case of Sid, the advice offered is so overly simplistic that for the audience to believe that the idea hadn’t already crossed Matt’s mind means he was either incompetent or just an unconvincing character. Sure, he’s funny and it’s amusing to see him take his lumps for being an impetuous youth, but there are better more natural ways to work the comedy into the supposedly emotionally wracked story.
"The Descendants" opens December 9, 2011 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by Alexander Payne. Written by Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon. Starring George Clooney, Matthew Lillard, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller, Nick Krause.
