The Descendants is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family's land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.
The best word to describe The Descendants is raw. It’s a movie that revolves around the death of a mother and the resulting effect it has on her family. It doesn’t avoid any topic and never attempts to be blunt. It answers them thoroughly and effectively in a manner that feels all too realistic. It throws its emotions at the screen and have you react to them rather than trying to force one out of you. It does a lot without actually doing much work, if that makes any sense at all.
One of the keys to this film is that it treats its characters as if they are real. That doesn’t seem like that hard of a job, but other films seem to struggle with this aspect heavily. They are not perfect and the film slowly un-wraps them and the best and worst of them are revealed that help define them. Their actions before become clearer and the path forward seem appropriate once they finally move on. It’s really fascinating actually. Seeing the struggles of a family come together has been portrayed so realistic. It parts where you feel a clichéd moment coming, catches you a bit off guard, taking another direction instead. It’s wonderful. This journey this family takes comes off a bit daunting, but it places some effect comedy in the right situations, to try and not be too depressing of a film. In fact its only real weakness can come from the audience and their expectations. If you expect that big moment where everything gets fixed in a nice little bow, you’re going to be disappointed. It wants you to actually feel for these characters by the time it ends.
It helps to achieve that when you have George Clooney in your lead. He uses his famous emotionless stare and hides the emotions that his character so easily hides. He’s perfect for it. He’s always been able to do a lot within the frame simply by talking. It may not be the best actor nominee a lot are begging to give him, but he’s very effective in the film. In fact the more impressive co-star is his film daughter Shailene Woodley. If you ever saw her before this, you’d know just how god awful she has been. But here, she proves, with the right script, that she can be a good actress. It helps that her character never falls into the trap of clichéd territory, but Woodley plays with her emotions on her shoulder for all to see and nails it. Very impressive work, one that very well could lead into a best supporting nomination.
This will be one of the easiest films to recommend. It is a charming heart filled film with an indie-Sundance vibe but with a much more substantial production value. Even if the trailer turned you off, this is still a film that is filled with so much reality, it’s bound to hit somewhere close to home. Give it a chance the first opportunity you get. And don’t worry its not all sad and mopey, at certain points had me cracking the hell up.
Overall Score: 8.5/10
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