The Descendants

[UnSub]

George Clooney plays a man dealing with his catatonic wife, daughters who don't relate to him, the affair his wife has been having and a property deal and oh my fucking god it's a Hallmark movie with better quality actors and set in Hawaii.

It should have been called "Everybody Cries".

[Tarami]

I don't get the attention this movie has gotten. I went between and more or less the entire movie. I haven't seen a movie trying to be so mercilessly manipulative since I watched Slumdog Millionaire. Ooooooh wait...

And the music... the music. Sad guitars. Sad guitars. It's Hawaii! Couldn't it atleast be sad ukeleles?

[UnSub]

They had traditional (I'm guessing, anyway, since my knowledge of Hawaii is pretty limited) music over the many, many landscape shots.

[Tarami]

Yeah, I got that they used traditional (cliché) music for most scenes, problem was that it got excessive.

The blame probably doesn't lie with the choice of music though, not really. It's a far more general lack of contrasting emotional tones that just makes the movie into a long, monotone display of sadness. We're not even made feel sad because we aren't given enough exposition to develop that emotion ourselves, we're just shown some non-descript dude being sad. It's an ephemeral kind of script in which nothing is solid enough to create anticipation in the viewer. Things don't progress or expand, they barely limp along until we come to the obvious conclusion of the several, isolated subplots.

Basically it's just a hodgepodge of assorted extreme close-ups of a smug George Clooney. How we got there or where we are going has no importance. It's a film with no beginning, no climax and an inevitable ending. Clooney is still full of himself, the daughters drop drugs in favour of ice cream in an act of nauseating goody-twoshoeness and everyone feels bad for ol' George, him having had such a hard time and all. Note that I actually enjoy Clooney for the most part, just not when the director is obviously this far up his ass.

I'm guessing Payne (the director) wanted to make a film that showed the raw emotional side of loss and moral choice, but storytelling doesn't really work by just parading facts and emotional states in front of a camera.

Edit: Some grammar snake.

[UnSub]

Thinking about it, the main characters' lives were only improved by the wife having a horrible accident and dying. The husband gets his life back from a cheating bitch! The elder daughter stops being rebellious! The younger daughter stops acting out!

It's an interesting moral to that particular story.

[Tarami]

It is, actually. It's outright stated that the wife was the better parent, yet everything improves when she's out of the picure (har-har). In addition, given the indirect characterization she's given through others' reminiscing, it's obvious that she was a vain, bitter, thrill-seeker and not at all some caring super-parent who always put the children first (supposedly unlike Clooney's character.)

Thinking about it, I can't recall a single good quality of hers being mentioned. I'm sure there were some general platitudes but everything specific made her sound like a bitch I couldn't have wished a better fate for. For a character that the whole film supposedly revolves around, it's bad.

Also, I came across a reviewer who thought that the ending scene with Matt (Clooney) and the daughters sharing a blanket and eating ice cream was understated. Surely, the only way to be less understated was to have them to engage in a spontaneous threesome?

[UnSub]

That they were watching "March of the Penguins" - which is all about families bonding and the importance of the male in raising the chicks - while eating the ice cream really piled on the sentiment for me.

I am amazed that this film has received as much awards attention as well. Take away Clooney and I think this film would have been invisible.

[pxib]

Mainly it's been a terrible movie year and Oscar is looking for nominees.

[murdoc]

Mainly it's been a terrible movie year and Oscar is looking for nominees.

This.

I watched 9/10 of the best picture nominations last year and pretty much enjoyed them all. This year, I haven't seen a single one and the only one I'm even remotely interested in is 'Hugo'.