After how much she liked Nebraska, this was a film that my wife was keen to watch. Alexander Payne made this in between Sideways in 2004 and Nebraska in 2013. After watching Nebraska, I decided that I liked Sideways more. After watching The Descendants, I decided that I like both of the other two more.
On the face of it, this is odd. The Descendants has a richer set of themes that it wants to explore than Nebraska. It also deals with a trickier subject matter. Matt King, played brilliantly by George Clooney, has to deal with the imminent death of his death who lies in a coma after being involved in a boating accident. This includes breaking the bad news to family and friends and taking a more active role in the lives of his two daughters. His task is made complicated by a growing realization that the dying Mrs. King was neither a very good wife nor a very good mother, challenging the usual taboo that one must speak no ill of someone who is about to die.
All this is filmed in sunny Hawaii amidst colourful flora, cheerful holidaymakers and picturesque beaches, a not so subtle reminder of King’s opening monologue of how trouble can exist even in paradise. A side plot deals with the impending sale of an extremely large tract of undeveloped land owned by King’s extended family due to their connections with the Kamehameha Dynasty. The sale would make every member of the family extremely wealthy, but would mean not only surrendering an irreplaceable part of their family’s legacy.
Despite the rich premise and high production values, the film suffers by being too diffuse. The different themes in play do overlap but feel only tangentially related to one another. It also makes me feel uneasy how the film has nothing good to say about Mrs. King, who as her friend remarks, is in no position to defend herself. The one person who loves her, her father, appears to love her unconditionally without really knowing who she was. This makes it difficult to appreciate why losing her causes such grief for the King family.
Finally, after seeing the three Alexander Payne films, his usual modus operandi becomes a little too obvious. Here, Matt King is so patient and understanding compared to everyone else, despite being arguably the wronged party, that it beggars belief. It made me realize that Sideways was so good partly because the audience surrogate there, Paul Giamatti’s Miles Raymond, is just as flawed as everyone else in the film. It’s particularly galling here how everyone seems to fall in line behind Matt King after some token resistance. His eldest daughter’s rebellious nature for example is forgotten soon after the character’s introduction, while her friend Sid acts like a doofus in the beginning but inexplicably becomes supportive and even wise later in the film.
To be sure, The Descendants remains a cut above most other films and is very much worth watching. I’d just like to see Payne take more risks with his protagonists.