Something to watch tonight: Thursday 5 June

The Descendants (Payne, 2011)

When The Holdovers came out at the end of 2023 we decided to have a rewatch of one of Alexander Payne’s earlier pictures, The Descendants, which I remembered liking but turned out to have written a lukewarm review of. (The games memories play – I must have enjoyed it enough to actually buy a copy when it came out on Blu-ray!)

I really enjoyed Alexander Payne’s The Descendants – at least while I was watching it. Some films will do that to you, though. They push all sorts of groovy buttons while you are in the room but they diminish as you re-examine them. Connections that you thought were there turn out to be illusory, a series of satisfying emotional moments don’t cohere into something complete and you realise that you were enjoying it so much you wished it into something profound.

I blame Clooney. He’s such a watchable presence, always combining that Cary Grant movie star-ness with an underlying emotional frailty. His characters carry that square-jawed aspirational male solidity but rarely do they actually know what is going on or what to do. He specialises in people who are making it up as they go along and that has tremendous appeal – if George Clooney doesn’t know what he’s doing then none of us do.

In The Descendants, Clooney’s performance papers over the cracks in a story of a privileged Hawai’i lawyer forced to confront some big human issues. His wife is in a coma from a jet-ski accident, he can’t seem to get through to his two daughters and – to make matters worse from his point of view – he was being cuckolded by a real estate agent.

Individual scenes provide enough surprises and wry observations to seem fresh, the non-Clooney performances range from fine (Shailene Woodley as the teenage daughter) to terrific (Robert Forster as the father-in-law) and the screenplay by Payne and Nat Faxon has some wonderful moments. I think my main problem is a resolution that sees Clooney’s character having made a decision and learnt something – but it’s not clear exactly what.

That second (or possibly third) watch confirmed that The Descendants is much better – and more moving – than I gave it credit for. I think I was going through a period there where I felt I had to pick holes in things in order to be a proper critic.

Another Payne film that I am very fond of is Downsizing which was recommended here back in September 2023.

Also reviewed in that February 2012 Capital Times column: David Fincher’s remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (“spirited and stylish”) and Jason Reitman’s excellent vehicle for Charlize Theron, Young Adult.