The Descendants (2011)

Alexander Payne's first film in seven years (yes, it has been that long since the wine infused, lovable snobbery of Sideways), The Descendants (2011), would be a great film if it wasn't for its familiarity.  That is not to say that the plot or the casting is necessarily stereotypical, just that it feels like Payne, despite his absence, is still drawn into the same comfort zone:  middle aged men dealing with an existential crisis.  In Election (1999), Payne gave us a portrait of a school teacher (Matthew Broderick) fraying at the edges thanks to troubles at home and his obnoxious star pupil (Reese Witherspoon).  His follow up, About Schmidt (2002), focused on a recently widowed man (Jack Nicholson) who, after discovering that his wife had cheated on him, goes on a road trip to try to protect his daughter (Hope Davis) from following in his footsteps.  Sideways (2004) continued the trend by giving us another school teacher (Paul Giamatti), this one a lovesick and struggling novelist, who quotes Bukowski.  

One of Pauline Kael's objections to Andrew Sarris's auteur theory of the cinema was the idea that real auteurs have reoccurring thematic, narrative, and aesthetic through lines in their work.  By Sarris's definition, Alexander Payne would be an auteur.  However, Kael was quick to point out that such traits are not necessarily a beneficial quality to have.  After all, reoccurring characters run the risk of growing stale and/or lazy.  Isn't a real auteur someone who tries to reach outside their comfort zone and approach each project uniquely?  

For the record, I do not agree completely with Sarris or Kael, nor do I think Payne is lazy.  Payne is an auteur; his voice (often with co-writer Jim Taylor) for comedy is perhaps his greatest definable attribute.  However, the unique quality of that voice stems precisely from its uniqueness.  We are given deep observations about life with a bittersweet smile in Payne's work, the juxtaposition of the content and the form of delivery often surprises us, which is how Payne can make us laugh at moments that would be typically be depressing as hell (and sometimes, vice-versa).  

So, here we are again.  This time around, the middle aged man is a well off lawyer by the name of Matt King (George Clooney).  Matt's wife (Patricia Hastie) recently fell into a coma after a boating accident.  He is informed, shortly into the film's first act, that she isn't going to come out of it and that her final wishes were not to remain on life support.  In order to ensure things meet their end properly, Matt picks up his eldest daughter (Shailene Woodley) from private school so that she can keep tabs on his youngest daughter (Amara Miller) while the family visits other friends (including Mary Birdsong and Rob Huebel) and family (Robert Forster, Beau Bridges, and others) to break the news.  Complications arise when Matt discovers his wife was cheating on him with a local realtor (Matthew Lillard) who may or may not be involved in a large land sale that Matt is spearheading.  

I'm reluctant to write much more about the plot for two reasons.  First, despite the crises that Matt faces, The Descendants - like most of Payne's work - often avoids the typical dramatic paths.  For instance, while Matt is drawn across Hawaii to find his wife's lover, he (and Payne) never allows the search to completely derail life's more immediate pleasures.  Second, and this is related to the first point, Payne often avoids overplaying certain dramatic beats.  He is neither sentimental nor melodramatic, his grasp of characters far too nuanced to force them all into initial gut reactions (and Payne does a great job throughout the film of making us judge a character by his or her cover, only to force us to revise that initial impression).  

Of course, the movie is well done, as all Payne's films are.  Clooney gives another wonderful performance against type, Shailene Woodley will be a talent to watch for, and Robert Forster steals the two scenes he is in (My favorite line?  "I'm gonna hit you now.").  If this had been Payne's follow up to Election, it would be a great film.  However, the work he has done since Election casts a long, beautiful, shadow that The Descendants does not even attempt to escape.  It seems content to rest in that shadow, which means it's a great film for 2011 (in retrospect, the last great year at the cineplex seems to have been 2007, the 1939 of the aughts) but lacks the potency of Sideways for that greatness to go far beyond the short-term.