Showing @ Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh until Thu 2 Feb
Alexander Payne / USA / 2011 / 115 mins
Forced sentiments can feel lethargic in even the most impressive film. Throw in a little bit of paradise as a location and the Hollywood machine may well rear its familiar head once more. Alexander Payne manages to flirt enough with these romantic paradigms without losing the strength of his character relationships. Based on Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel of the same name, local lawyer Matt King (George Clooney) must reorganise his priorities and his family after his wife is involved in a speedboat accident.
The sprawling Hawaiian landscape in which the original story is set can often immerse and swathe its audience, the untouched natural beauty radiating with greens and blues throughout the film. You can sense that Payne has to work hard at drawing the focus back onto his characters – Clooney at times comes across as Atlas-like in his emotional strength, stomaching the gravity of his wife’s condition, fathering two young daughters, running a law firm and deciding whether or not to sell a portion of land entrusted to him through generations of care. While it lacks the biting (and somewhat fatalistic) edge we have come to expect from the director who brought us About Schmidt and Sideways, Payne layers the turmoil to make for a genuinely emotional account of heartache and resolution.
“The Descendants” is an excellent film, no doubt about it. But given the mix of golden globe and Oscar buzz I expected a lot more.
The storyline and the premise of the movie is ideal. In fact, the tagline caught my attention enormously: “trying to reconnect with daughters.” That is exactly the type of movie I like. Instantly, I could tell this was a movie about character development and human connection, usually the type of movies with the greatest potential.
Unfortunately, it was merely decent, although not special. It felt like the movie built up so much potential, but failed to release it at a certain point within movie. The full movie, for me, felt too introductory in nature. Not necessarily the plot, because the plot does evolve, however the overall “feel” of the movie felt preliminary to a bigger and more dramatic event which never happened.
It’s tough to explain my feelings towards the movie because the fault wasn’t necessarily technical or specific. But it did linger around and distracted my viewing somewhat. I felt like there was still more to discover in both Clooney’s character and the character of his daughters. Also, I think this element alone impacted on Clooney’s performance. His performance was good, definitely, but again, because I felt like there was more to be explored, naturally, I also felt like his performance could have been added to (but not necessarily improved).
Given the Oscar buzz of this movie, I have to compare it to other movies of a similar nature. And unfortunately, I didn’t feel like there was sufficient link between the characters…although the potential to reach that connection was established, it was not acted upon in my opinion. Unfortunately I have to say there have been better developed “re-establishing connection” movies.
All in all, this is an enjoyable movie, but it is missing some important elements which deteriorates the viewing experience to some extent.
Have a good day!
Debbie