Films: The Descendants

Yes, the awful voice over from the trailer is actually in The Descendants, the new film by Alexander Payne, director of Sideways:

For those too lazy to watch, the summary is; just because we don't live in paradise doesn't mean we're always happy. This is supposed to be enlightening. Really?....No really? What kind of friends are these? Ones who don't read the newspapers, or read books, or have never been to the Gold Coast? Five minutes on Caville Avenue will reveal a misery no amount of frangipani bumper stickers can cover up.

Maybe the metaphor suits the film. The Descendants is shamelessly pigheaded, disagreeably so. It's one big tropical-flavored white whine. It's Eat, Pray, Love in an Aloha shirt.

Clooney plays Matt King, absent father and soon-to-be bereaved husband. It's a role which is apparently causing Oscar whispers. It's true, Clooney does do a marvelous job of making an awful character somewhat likeable. This is a man who maliciously brings a woman to tears, who is self confessed negligent, tightfisted father, and who spitefully and pretty much deliberately destroys another family. Did I mention he's the descendant of rich white landowners? Which means he has to decide whether to sell the family land, which is acres of paradise, or whether to keep it for themselves? Poor thing. Perhaps it's just the whole, you know, Occupy Wall Street, impending GFC2, and people being forced out of their homes and onto the street, but the film seems a smidge off key.

The trailer spruiks The Descendants as a family movie.  It's an anti-family movie. The King clan start disjointed and stay that way. Not that that's a bad thing. All of the characters are for the most part believable, especially the daughters. They are all, in their own special ways, awful people. Even the youngest Scottie is a bully, a problem which is never really resolved. Even the comatose wife seemed to have been a nightmare, her accident blamed on the fact that hubby didn't buy her her own boat. No, really. Payne avoids using flashbacks. Normally I'd like this, but in the light of them being such unpleasant, self-absorbed goons, I maybe could have done with some buttery montages.

Grief seems to be a get-off free card for everything, which is the film's problem. Sure the King's have their issues, and I know their being repulsive is part of the film's schtick, but in the end it's hard to forget what they are, which is tycoons living in one of the most pristine and untroubled places on earth. To ask people to feel for them is asking a bit too much, even if the backdrops are lovely.