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A marvel of keen emotional intuition and non-judgmental human portraiture, Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” has a big and wonderful understanding of the many things that surround a person’s life, and subsequently, a person’s death.
When the wife of wealthy Hawaii landowner Matt King (George Clooney) slips into a coma from which she likely won’t emerge, the movie knows to seek out and include the many people she knew and affected, rather than conveniently confine the grief to the story’s main characters. It knows what grieving looks like and it knows grief’s varying degrees of privacy, sometimes sharing a character’s anguish with only the audience, and other times, shielding it from view altogether.
More than many, this is a film defined by what it shares and what it doesn’t, an approach Payne beautifully employs to interpret one of the year’s finest screenplays, which he co-wrote with comedians Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. It’s a movie of richness and riches, with so many great and meaningful working parts, which slyly snake together and excel on the fronts of parenthood, ancestry, finance, marriage, forgiveness, milieu, music and more.
Though he’s never been an actor whose talent knocks you flat, the superbly consistent Clooney has a knack for choosing projects that are scene-by-scene terrific. Whether affording Matt’s eldest daughter, Alex (Shailene Woodley), the opportunity to thrillingly and believably exercise big-sister rights over 9-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), or making you cry and then laugh within mere seconds, “The Descendants” is such a project, and it allows Clooney to emit extra sensitivity as a regretful husband and out-of-practice, “understudy” father.
It’s grand to find a film so gently sweet and yet so doggedly unsentimental, unfailingly dodging the gag reflex as it plants lumps in the throat. It is at once accessible, funny and unassumingly clever in how it links its themes, most notably tethering a major land deal to love’s responsibilities. One recurring pursuit is the demystification of Hawaii — the assurance that sun and sand don’t guarantee paradise. And yet, paradise, minus the escapism, is often precisely what “The Descendants” feels like.
The Descendants
R
Four reels out of four
Opens tomorrow at the Ritz East
Recommended Rental
Conan the Barbarian
R
Available Nov. 22
It may be an utterly ridiculous and gorily tasteless B-movie, but if you’re willing to embrace “Conan the Barbarian” in all its boundary-free splendor, you’ll take in one of the better popular movies of the summer, which towers over peers thanks to its shameless commitment and lack of self-seriousness. As a balding, clawed witch out for blood, Rose McGown is the awful/delicious highlight. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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