The Descendants (Closing Night Selection)
A Film By
Alexander Payne
United States
Clouds
always seem to hang over the sky in The Descendants, the first feature
length film from Alexander Payne since his wine-country comedy Sideways.
The film, set in Hawaii, is full of gorgeous sun-soaked beaches and tropical
landscapes, but those clouds always seem to hang a shadow in the land. It seems
apt then that our protagonist, Matt King, calls out the absurdity of the island
as a place only of happiness. “Paradise can go fuck itself,” he exclaims in a
voiceover.
The Descendants is a reserved and fascinating maturation for the director
of usually much more bizarre comedies like About Schmidt and Election. The film, which stars George Clooney among a cast of character
actors and breakout unknowns, is a much more nuanced work with melancholic
tones as a man has to come to terms with his identity as a father and a
husband. On the surface, and through the way that Mr. Payne adapts the
narrative from the novel by Kuai Hart Hemmings, it feels like Mr. Payne is
treading on easy territory. But the film is all in the details, and especially
Mr. Payne’s direction of the film, as it presents a slow transition of forgiveness through a portrait of an American family, coming to learn what that word really means.
