Movies

If a filmmaker can create a scene that reflects a brutally sobering reality, it's a sign of true talent. Same goes if they can make a moment of side-splitting hilarity. In one particular scene in The Descendants, writer-director Alexander Payne manages both.

In Payne's fourth film, George Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaii lawyer whose wife is severely injured in a boat accident. As he prepares to take her off life support, he is told by his troublesome older daughter Alex (Shailene Woodley) that his wife has been having an affair.

Payne's earlier films Election and Sideways also feature lead characters who are unfaithful to their partners, and they pay the consequences. Since the cheating wife in The Descendants spends the entire film in a coma, the repercussions simply reverberate around her family. King struggles to know how to feel about his wife's infidelity as he tells his friends and family about her impending death.

It's a deeply insightful look at a family in crisis, balancing moments of heavy emotions with that of sharp, often hysterically funny humour. Much of the comic relief comes courtesy of Alex's friend Sid (Nick Krause), a goofy surfer kid unaware of his own stupidity.

Clooney is the only household name in the film, but he is simply leading a stellar cast of practically unknowns. Woodley is marvellous as his difficult daughter, and Robert Forster is his seething best as an angry, grieving father-in-law.

The scenery is spectacular and the mostly Hawaiian music is well chosen. In all, the film is near-perfect — funny without being tacky, emotional without being sentimental.