Re: The Descendants
Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 8:30 pm
Crying scenes as actors' showcases are very interesting these days. Directors want so much to bestow a memorable one to their stars that lately they're finding new ways to film these attention-grabbers. In A Mighty Heart, Angelina Jolie curled herself up and screamed. In Fair Game, Naomi Watts sobbed with a toothbrush in her mouth. In The Descendants, Alexander Payne finds a new approach. George Clooney's cry is a quiet one, a tender one. He bends over to kiss his comatose wife lying in bed, and due to the angle of his face his tears take on an interesting trajectory. This veteran spewer creates a drippy snail trail down the bridge of his nose where it will presumably meet with its identical twin in the center... a poetic metaphor for two soulmates coming together as one.
As an indulgent star showcase, The Descendants isn't as disgusting as The Adjustment Bureau, but maybe I'd think differently had I never seen The Adjustment Bureau. It's also nowhere near as gratifying as Certified Copy, and that I can say with greater assurance. In this tale of life, death and family strife, it poses one of life's burning questions: How will Clooney react? The dominant mise-en-scene is the top one-third of George Clooney as we see him angered, befuddled, distraught, serene, sometimes a combination, most memorably putting on a smile on the behalf of others when he really wants to break down. His words and smile say one thing, his pained eyes say something else. (Unfortunately, I don't remember why he's doing this.) We see him in overhead shots as he grasps his temples. We see each profile in quick edits, in a (very) rare show of filmmaking technique. Each story development serves an excuse to see Clooney's reaction to it, and since there aren't many scenes that allow him to sustain a mood for long without either changing it as according to the script or cutting away from it to the next scene, reacting - rather than acting - is all his performance is.
And the movie itself is nothing but a melancholy pose. There's no true examination of his character or his development. So, when he (SPOILERS, I guess) changes his mind about whether to sell his land trust, or when he finally bonds with his daughter, I never really understood why. There's no explanation, and I guess we're supposed to take it as a given that what his character goes through is enough to change him, or that the little adventure he has with his daughter is enough to overlook all that came before and draw them closer. I suppose the argument to that is that it insults the audience's intelligence to have everything explained, that some things should be left unspoken. But in this case, it's narrative laziness, as if Payne feels no obligation to delve deep into the characters and their relationships with each other. That said, I will grant that maybe it was just me. I lost interest long before, so maybe I had given up following it altogether.
The supporting performances, outside of a few exceptions, grate. I often wince when Italiano criticizes a youth performance as too precocious and too American. But he has my deepest blessings to go after the soon-to-be nominated Shailene Woodley, the shrillest young actress to grace my eardrums since Kat Dennings. Beau Bridges is in maybe two scenes (poor guy, is that all he can get anymore?) and his delivery is all sing-songy affectation that seems to be very popular today and which, needless to say, I hate. And frankly, I'm at a loss to explain what the purpose of Nick Krause's character, as the older daughter's friend, was other than to crack obnoxious jokes. He's not a boyfriend. He's just a tag-along, and not even the older daughter who invited him appreciates his company. Fortunately, Robert Forster as the ornery father-in-law provides some welcome roughage, and the ten year old daughter played by Amara Miller was way cool. Her I loved, and I'd rather spend the day with this unpretentious, oft-distracted, emotionally underdeveloped kid than Woodley. Granted, she probably wasn't even acting, which would explain why her portrayal came across as more authentic than Woodley's.
Not that I'm an expert on cinematography, but I was surprised at how flat the visuals of the Hawaiian coast were. They lacked any sort of crispness that would give one the sense of being there. And I hated the fucking music. It was constantly solo acoustic guitar, solo acoustic guitar, solo acoustic guitar, etc. and I don't think I need to tell you that the result is no "The Third Man". When you have that same instrument throughout the movie, there's no variety and no dynamics, and it dulls the film as a result. During a quietly emotional scene, the guitar quietly starts plinking right where an orchestra would normally take up the cue. I will admit that it probably would have been worse if Payne HAD used a soupy orchestra, but then... why shoot your scenes in such a conventional manner where a music cue is expected?
And yet, there's some hope. The Alexander Payne of old, the satirist and dark humorist, is very nearly buried in this exercise of star vanity and sentimentaility, but on rare ocassions he emerges from the gloom. And when he does, the snap of that good old nastiness made me suck my breath in. And then there's the final, wordless five minutes with Clooney and his daughters in the boat where everything comes together. It's flawlessly edited, beautifully shot - finally, Hawaii looks gorgeous - and that solo guitar at last finds a truly haunting melody to play. The sense of finality is perfectly conveyed. What a shame there was all this flailing about until we finally arrived at this point.
As an indulgent star showcase, The Descendants isn't as disgusting as The Adjustment Bureau, but maybe I'd think differently had I never seen The Adjustment Bureau. It's also nowhere near as gratifying as Certified Copy, and that I can say with greater assurance. In this tale of life, death and family strife, it poses one of life's burning questions: How will Clooney react? The dominant mise-en-scene is the top one-third of George Clooney as we see him angered, befuddled, distraught, serene, sometimes a combination, most memorably putting on a smile on the behalf of others when he really wants to break down. His words and smile say one thing, his pained eyes say something else. (Unfortunately, I don't remember why he's doing this.) We see him in overhead shots as he grasps his temples. We see each profile in quick edits, in a (very) rare show of filmmaking technique. Each story development serves an excuse to see Clooney's reaction to it, and since there aren't many scenes that allow him to sustain a mood for long without either changing it as according to the script or cutting away from it to the next scene, reacting - rather than acting - is all his performance is.
And the movie itself is nothing but a melancholy pose. There's no true examination of his character or his development. So, when he (SPOILERS, I guess) changes his mind about whether to sell his land trust, or when he finally bonds with his daughter, I never really understood why. There's no explanation, and I guess we're supposed to take it as a given that what his character goes through is enough to change him, or that the little adventure he has with his daughter is enough to overlook all that came before and draw them closer. I suppose the argument to that is that it insults the audience's intelligence to have everything explained, that some things should be left unspoken. But in this case, it's narrative laziness, as if Payne feels no obligation to delve deep into the characters and their relationships with each other. That said, I will grant that maybe it was just me. I lost interest long before, so maybe I had given up following it altogether.
The supporting performances, outside of a few exceptions, grate. I often wince when Italiano criticizes a youth performance as too precocious and too American. But he has my deepest blessings to go after the soon-to-be nominated Shailene Woodley, the shrillest young actress to grace my eardrums since Kat Dennings. Beau Bridges is in maybe two scenes (poor guy, is that all he can get anymore?) and his delivery is all sing-songy affectation that seems to be very popular today and which, needless to say, I hate. And frankly, I'm at a loss to explain what the purpose of Nick Krause's character, as the older daughter's friend, was other than to crack obnoxious jokes. He's not a boyfriend. He's just a tag-along, and not even the older daughter who invited him appreciates his company. Fortunately, Robert Forster as the ornery father-in-law provides some welcome roughage, and the ten year old daughter played by Amara Miller was way cool. Her I loved, and I'd rather spend the day with this unpretentious, oft-distracted, emotionally underdeveloped kid than Woodley. Granted, she probably wasn't even acting, which would explain why her portrayal came across as more authentic than Woodley's.
Not that I'm an expert on cinematography, but I was surprised at how flat the visuals of the Hawaiian coast were. They lacked any sort of crispness that would give one the sense of being there. And I hated the fucking music. It was constantly solo acoustic guitar, solo acoustic guitar, solo acoustic guitar, etc. and I don't think I need to tell you that the result is no "The Third Man". When you have that same instrument throughout the movie, there's no variety and no dynamics, and it dulls the film as a result. During a quietly emotional scene, the guitar quietly starts plinking right where an orchestra would normally take up the cue. I will admit that it probably would have been worse if Payne HAD used a soupy orchestra, but then... why shoot your scenes in such a conventional manner where a music cue is expected?
And yet, there's some hope. The Alexander Payne of old, the satirist and dark humorist, is very nearly buried in this exercise of star vanity and sentimentaility, but on rare ocassions he emerges from the gloom. And when he does, the snap of that good old nastiness made me suck my breath in. And then there's the final, wordless five minutes with Clooney and his daughters in the boat where everything comes together. It's flawlessly edited, beautifully shot - finally, Hawaii looks gorgeous - and that solo guitar at last finds a truly haunting melody to play. The sense of finality is perfectly conveyed. What a shame there was all this flailing about until we finally arrived at this point.