The Descendants opens with a snapshot of the sublime. A beautiful woman is shown in close-up, coasting along in a motorboat on a summer day. If Merriam-Webster needed a photo to accompany their definition of “content,” this would more than suffice. After a fade to black, director Alexander Payne slowly begins to reveal the human drama beneath this one perfect moment in time.
The woman is also the mother of two daughters. Alex (Shailene Woodley) is 17 and sharp, though teetering on the edge of making lasting poor choices. Scottie (Amara Miller) is a ten year old scamp who says the danrdest things in the “Little Miss Sunshine” vein, but, you know, done a million times better.
Clooney is upfront with himself (and us) that he is the “back-up parent,” completely out of his depth. When he realizes that his wife has a living will that demands she be taken off life-support, he turns to Alex to help him with the preparations of alerting family and friends, and keeping an eye on Scottie. It's here that Alex drops the bomb that Mom, in fact, was cheating on Dad.
It's a conceit that could only exist in the movies, but Clooney plays Matt King as so mild and so frustratingly reasonable that he sells it. Lucky thing, too, as this way The Descendants can hop from island to island as the characters slowly form stronger bonds that will be able to hold once Mom has left the picture.
The Descendants is a tear-jerker, that's for sure, but the peculiarities of the situation elevate this from a standard weepie to a genuine and genuinely engrossing story. The situation is weird, but never wacky. The characters have their idiosyncrasies, but they aren't quirky. On paper, this is Lifetime Network tripe, but in the theater, I was a blubbering mess that didn't feel manipulated. I simply cared.
A final note on the music. Not since Jim Jarmusch's use of ska in Broken Flowers has a particular use of ethnic music, in this case acoustic Hawaiian, been so prevalent in a film. One could easily dismiss the slack-key guitar and island rhythms as “vacation tunes,” but the choices on The Descendants' soundtrack betrays the sadness that is a part of all life, even a life in paradise.
