The Sadness of Men Trying to Keep Up: The Descendants

Anyone left who hasn’t seen The Descendants has almost surely seen the trailers, in which George Clooney—playing a wealthy Hawaiian lawyer and landowner named Matt King—is running. And running, in various ways, he is throughout this beautiful and sad and funny film. He runs, in sandals, from his house to a neighbor’s to demand what they know about the affair his gravely injured wife was conducting before her boating accident; he runs up and down a beach in search of the intruder in his marriage. And, figuratively, he is running to keep up with--or keep ahead of--a torrent of misfortune; and running to catch up with the children he has allowed, in the conventional male way, to run ahead of him while he was busy earning the privileges (private schools, a lush Oahu island home) that allowed him to think it was okay for him to be, as he says, “the back-up parent.”

   It is not at all incidental that in those scenes in which he is literally running, he looks distinctly like someone who is, well, Not A Runner. Pumps his arms a little too fast, strides a little too short. (And any daily runner would have a pair of sneakers, at least a pair of old beaters, to slap on in the case of an emergency like needing to run down the canyon road to find out from the neighbors who his wife was screwing behind his back.)

   The more I think about this movie the more I think it is, at least in part, a story about male competence, and incompetence. And that it is a far prettier, smarter, and less pretentious story (one that strives, certainly, to be more Hollywood-mainstream) than Sideways, also directed by Alexander Payne and also about the woes and competencies and incompetencies of middle-aged men.

   The sadness of guys, trying to keep up. They, we, seem to be on the ropes, everywhere. Matt King is on the ropes and as imperfect as his jogging appears, he seems to be even more less-than-perfectly-competent at almost everything else he is trying to keep up with. Most especially his daughters, the younger of whom is texting cruel and “inappropriate” comments to classmates, and the older of whom, Alex, is honing the conventional stance of snide cynicism teenage girls seem to have toward all adults (perhaps, especially males) and selectively their parents (perhaps particularly their fathers, for whom they also yet reserve a touchingly ill-concealed desire to love, if only dad wouldn’t act so ridiculously embarrassing). Alex is also working on a possibly incipient case of alcoholism. More about this particular teenager and the actress who portrays her later.

   But for all his imperfection, Matt is also, through and through, a Pretty Good Guy, doing his best. I had the interesting, passing thought early in this movie that George Clooney didn’t seem to be working too hard, that maybe this role wasn’t too demanding. Which either suggests that he knows all about being Matt King, or that he was doing a piece of very fine acting. A female friend I saw this with commented later that (hold your breath for a surprise) she normally finds George Clooney attractive—but didn’t find him attractive in this film; by which I think she means to suggest that the actor had made himself in his role somehow physically unattractive, which would suggest a very, very, very good acting job indeed.

   But I think I understand that. Because the attractiveness, especially the sexual allure, of men is so allied with the projection of confidence, of competence. And when their need for the affirmation of others becomes too acute they can seem to be un-manned. Yet (and I know these generalizations about gender can seem tiresome) men never seem to need too much. My father, whenever his birthday rolled around, would tell us as a kind of regular joke whenever we asked him what he wanted that he would be satisfied with a “kind word.”

   Matt King is a man sorely in need of a kind word. The most memorable scene and the one most emblematic of this very competent but out-of-his-depth man’s need for a consoling word is after the decision has been made—mandated by an advance directive—that life support will be withdrawn and that his wife will die. Friends and immediate family are invited to bid goodbye to the woman. Her father, Matt’s father-in-law, is a hard type and something of a knucklehead who uses the occasion to berate Matt for his failings. Whereupon daughter Alex speaks up and says, “Hey my father’s doing a really great job in a difficult situation.”

   This is the occasion of a really priceless piece of acting when George Clooney is seen doing a double, or triple, or quadruple or maybe quintuple take at his daughter, madly desiring in a situation of impossible protocol, to wrap his arms around the girl and hug her to death. I certainly wanted to.

   About this actress, Shailene Woodley. She has received richly deserved attention for her role, but I think she was robbed of an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Because this young lady nailed this role to the wall. The mouthiness—what is it about teenage girls that causes their angst to come screaming through their teeth?—the insouciance, and then the casual, unexpected brilliance and grace that makes you wonder if maybe they really are (as they assume) smarter than you. And the way they mature so much faster than you could have anticipated, as Alex does progressively in this film.

   I love the traditional Hawaiian music that permeates the movie. The resolution of the land deal at the end makes sense in a way I didn’t think it would. And in the end Matt and his daughters are lounging in a sofa watching a movie being narrated by Morgan Freeman. I didn't catch it at the time, but read later that the movie is March of the Penguins. About mammals who learn through adaptive evolution how to nurture their offspring in what seems like impossible circumstances.