As a subcategory of the horror genre, the exorcism film does not have the best reputation. For every The Exorcist, there are a dozen Posessed’s and Beyond the Door’s. Yet, when done well, there is rarely something as profoundly [...]
The Descendants follows Matt (George Clooney), a father who struggles to balance the discovery that his comatose wife had been having an affair with the grief of his two young daughters, Alex (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller). Clooney is soft spoken and refreshingly dumpy, strung up in high-waisted slacks and boxy, floral-printed shirts. With his expressive eyes and constantly pursed mouth, Clooney wars with the often stilted dialogue and unfortunate voice-overs to evoke a solitary resignation as he proceeds through Matt’s misfortune. When Clooney delivers the line, “No one wants to do this,” it is one of the only moments that we believe him.
Disappointingly, in an attempt to slip Clooney under the guise of a well-meaning everyman, Payne has effectively erased Clooney’s charm and replaced him with a heap of mediocrity. He may be more likable than previous characters, but he is less interesting, and not even his lush eyelashes can elicit something beyond apathy from the viewer.
Yet the comedic portions’ failings are epically upstaged by the film school quality voice-over. Clooney audibly struggles to deliver heavy lines like, “My family is like an archipelago.” The film fails to provide any precedent for the voice-over, at times representing it as a memoiric reflection, at others a direct thought from the scene.
Furthermore, the filmmakers made the bizarre choice to set the movie in Hawaii. Most of this implementation feels simply phony, as if it was added in as an afterthought, like the acoustic ukulele that pursues the characters in every non-dialogue scene. It becomes clear through Matt’s narration, however, that this is meant as a clumsy metaphor for family and tragedy, indicating the the persistent tranquility of nature despite human strife, and the destructive reactions of humans to the natural order of things, whether it’s resistance to death, or the desire to develop a nature reserve.
If only Payne had taken another message from the setting and worked on making his film flow and feel more natural. Perhaps then we could walk out of the theater feeling touched, rather than hungry for a trip to the beach.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
