MOONEY CLOONEY
Keeping his sexiest man alive image in mind, it’s hard to imagine George Clooney playing an ordinary man. That he does it with admirable grace and lack of show-off histrionics, explains all those best actor nominations and wins.
Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (based based on Kaui Hart Hemmings' novel) is also a family drama of the kind that is not made too often in Hollywood, which probably also explains the high level praise that it has got from critics in the West. It must be a relief to just see normal people on screen for a change, not people flying around doing heroic things.
Matt King (Clooney) lives in Hawaii-- which is excuse for fabulous visuals-- and has been a “back-up” parent to his daughters Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller). As a descendant of the earliest land owning families in Hawaii, and a trustee of a tract of land coveted by developers, he and his cousins have to decide on the multi-million dollar sale. But he is also facing a personal crisis—his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) is lying in hospital in coma, and he has one rebellious and one traumatised kid to deal with. As he makes the painful decision of allowing doctors to withdraw life support, he also gets smacked on the face with the revelation that his wife was having an affair.
Even as his father-in-law (Robert Forster) bitterly blames him for Elizabeth’s condition, Matt, with a weird obduracy, wants to trace the man, and ask him to say his goodbyes to Elizabeth. His takes his daughters as well as Alexandra’s moronic boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause) on the trip to meet Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard). He finds that Brian is ‘happily’ married to a sweet Julie (Judy Greer) and is a father too.
Payne handles what could be cheesy melodrama with restraint, allowing all his characters, even Sid (who has a moving heart to heart with Matt) a dignity that the circumstances could easily snatch away. To Indian parents, the sheer bad behaviour of the kids would be shocking, but it is an indication of what American liberal parenting is up against. Running in the background is the calm track about saving nature and beauty from ugly urbanisation and passing on a worthwhile legacy to the next generation.
Clooney, dressed in unflattering Hawaiian shirts, just leaves his stardom at the door, and enters the film with a humility that lets him play Matt King with complete honesty. Other stars of Clooney’s generation are playing romantic leads with girls Shailene Woodley’s age; at least he has finally decided to grow up and be a man.
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