I was looking forward to this movie for the most obvious reason: George Clooney. However, "The Descendants" is a much better movie than I had anticipated. It's about everything and about not much at all. Basically, it's a short story of a family just trying to cope with death and disappointment and the unfairness of life. Set in Hawaii, the scenery is pretty much the only nice, calm, happy thing we see. Clooney plays the husband of a woman in a coma who is never coming out of that coma. He is the father of two girls, immediately thrust into their daily lives in a way he is not prepared for. How to grieve, how to let his kids grieve, how to respond to the shocking news that his wife was having an affair before she was injured, simply how to move forward: these themes and more are what the movie tackles.
Every person in the movie is excellent. Clooney doesn't look gorgeous and glamorous, he looks tired and sad. The girls are snotty and bratty and, at the same time, afraid and insecure. The wife's father, played by the great Robert Forster, is cold, hard, bitter and heart-broken. The sub-plot revolving around some land the family owns and wants to sell was, to me, a metaphor about keeping sacred things intact. Family, inherited land, one's own soul: sometimes holding on tightly is the only way to be free.
Two thumbs up, check it out.
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