The Descendants: A Study in Island Time
by Sadia Ashraf
Director Alexander PayneAlexander Payne’s film The Descendants, starring George Clooney, is refreshingly time stalled. The tone that Payne perfected in his 2004 Sideways, is so measured here, it seems to cheekily thumb its nose at frantic, time-accelerated CGI thrillers while saluting its numerous Oscar nominations. The film makes proclamations on current issues— family relationship building, immortality, environmental decay and looming economic instability with an unassuming subtlety that endears it to fans, critics and awards alike.
The stillness of plot and character is offset by the breezy, lush island setting. The Hawaiian backdrop of the film is so omnipresent; it becomes a cast member, gaining my vote for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. The Descendants is adapted from a debut novel by Hawaiian author Kaui Hart Hemmings. She demystifies the Islands, exclusively associated with tourism, by giving historical context to its western immigration and settlement. Payne also explores this in the film. The debunking of the paradisiacal islands can be also attributed to Clooney in his wary, anti touristy, passive-aggressive yet amenable portrayal of Matt King who declares, “Paradise can go **** itself.”
Clooney’s character, Matt, is a descendant of western missionaries who settled in Hawaii and became wealthy landowners. One of them even intermarried into a royal Polynesian family, leaving their descendants–Matt and his numerous cousins–very affluent. As the perturbed first-person narrator of the story, Matt eloquently sums his family circumstances in island speak, noting his immediate family is like an archipelago with the extended relatives spread over the various Hawaiian island.
While his relatives eek out their existence with a laidback ease, Matt’s life is marked by stress at home and at work. Much to his family’s displeasure, Matt stoically relies on his legal practice for income—preserving his inheritance. He thinks that spending his money on his family will make his daughters “entitled and spoiled.” His philosophy is cogently articulated as the theme and conflict of the film, “You give your children enough money to do something, but not enough to do nothing.”
Matt discovers that his wife, who has been in a coma due to an accident, cannot survive. The barebones plot of the film is that the news must be shared with the rest of his estranged family. The family’s discontent is revealed not through flashback but feisty dialogue between his two daughters, relatives and friends. Matt begins to grasp that their opprobrium stems not just from his wife’s devil-may-care lifestyle, but also his ostrich-in-the-sand attitude.
He is now forced to backpedal through painful recollections of his indifference towards his two daughters and his wife. Matt has to confront the discovery of his wife’s infidelity and its principal players, head on, while she lies comatose. He finds an unlikely ally in his alienated teenage daughter, superbly played by Shailene Woodley. She becomes a trusted companion through Matt’s awkward expedition to recoup the family’s dignity and seek absolution from his wife, despite his anger at her disloyalty.
On occasion, the film lingers and traipses on, but like in Sideways, Payne deliberately takes his time with the plot focusing on the intensity of its characters. Clooney’s deviation in The Descendants from his typical Cary Grant-like uber male roles is bracing, with lasting images of him wearing vintage tropical shirts while comically running in flip flops or bewildered by his 10 year old daughter’s tart retorts. The minor roles too in The Descendants are studies in disposition, like Matt’s disgruntled father-in-law and his daughter’s comical boyfriend.
The unhurried ride through the family’s self examination ultimately has them flourishing in its cathartic regeneration. After sprinkling his wife’s ashes in the Pacific, the closing credits run on a prolonged scene with Matt and his daughters casually eating ice cream while watching TV, a humdrum activity they hitherto never “connected” enough to do.
The film truly unravels at a leisurely pace, fitting for its island setting and island time. There is nothing leisurely, however, in the accolades and critical acclaim The Descendants has received and three days before the Oscars, my guess is that this contender will win big.
