The Descendants

This 2011 movie received widespread critical acclaim. Nominated for several Oscars including one for best actor for George Clooney the film did win the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

The movie was a modest success until the Oscar nominations and then on a longer and more widespread run at the theaters it did a bit better.

In the movie Matt King is a lawyer living in Hawaii. His family, long on the island, had endowed a trust with 25,000 pristine acres of which he is the sole executor of the trust. Based on laws against perpetuity the trust must dissolve in seven years so Matt, urged by his many cousins and relatives that stand to profit from the sale stands ready to sell the plot of land to a local developer.

However just as this is about to happen, Matt's wife is injured seriously in a boating accident and as the movie opens is in a coma in the hospital. Matt soon learns from the Doctor that she will not wake, and that based on a living will, she will have to be removed from the machines.

Matt gathers his daughters, the youngest Scottie, who is suffering from her own attempts to deal with this such as getting in trouble at school and texting mean messages to other girls, and Alex who is currently at a private girls school on another island. When Matt arrives to get her in the middle of the night, she is found out of her room and eventually drinking with some girl friends.

Matt is not close with his girls. He tells his oldest, Alex, about the true condition of her mother, but she is not outwardly phased. We learn that the Mother and Daughter had a major argument on the girl's last time home before the accident. The daughter blurts out to Matt that her Mom, his wife, was having an affair, that she had caught them, and that this was what had caused the argument.

Clooney is very good in this role. He portrays very well a man terribly conflicted. Assuming that his wife was having a sincere relationship he finds out who the man was and resolves to tell him that she will die. His reasoning is that the man might want to see her. He finds out upon meeting him however that even as his wife was contemplating leaving him, the other man had no such feelings for her.

Running parallel to the story of his wife is the story of the selling of the land and Matt's increasingly conflicted feelings about the pending sale. His family is very much on board with the sale, Beau Bridges has a small but strong role as a cousin looking forward to cashing in, but memories of his wife and the feelings of his youngest Scottie are starting to take a toll.

The relationship between Matt and his wife's parents is conflicted. His mother in law has late stage Alzheimer's, and his wife's father lashes out at him. It would be easy for Matt to let them know the truth about his daughter and what she had been doing, but he does not, he allows the lashing out at him and lets them depart with their memories of their daughter.

The movie is good. It shows relationships that have meaning and texture without resorting to being sticky sweet or one hour television drama simple. As solid as it was at times I found myself waiting for more, that might be reflection on the hype about the movie rather than a problem with the movie itself. The movie is very, very, good at what it does. I enjoyed it. It is not, however, a great movie and in that sense might disappoint those responding to the hype.

Clooney has grown into a very good actor. A role like this, seems perfect for him. Character parts fit him well, the softer the sell the better job he does.