I just got done reading Chuck Klosterman’s novel “The Visible Man,” which deals with the nature of reality. In a wider sense, all pop entertainment deals with the problem of reality, because fiction is the opposite of reality. Not just in the obvious sense of “made-up things vs. real things,” but in the sense that we consume fiction because it’s dramatic and defined, whereas life is confusing and chaotic.
And yet: Being realistic is a mark of a good story; you don’t want it to seem too story-like. But you also don’t want to be too obnoxiously artsy and boring. Alexander Payne — with “Election” (1999) and “About Schmidt” (2002) and even more so with “Sideways” (2004) and his long-overdue new movie “The Descendants” (2011) — has a knack for hitting that artistic sweet spot. I know his movies aren’t for everyone. I know some people will be bored by “The Descendants” and wonder “What’s the point of this story about a dad whose wife is in a coma?”
The point is that Payne does the little things well, and these are the very things I — and the writer-director’s many fans — revel in. He asks his actors to be a bit more naturalistic and understated than is the norm. He holds off on calling “cut” just a bit longer than is the norm. He holds an establishing shot just a bit more liberally than is the norm.
And he has a great, but understated, sense of humor. Not in the sense of jokes, but in the sense that he finds people’s everyday behavior funny and he knows how to re-create it. When an angry Matt (George Clooney) learns that his wife had been cheating on him, he runs in flip-flops over to a friends’ house to find out the name of the man she was seeing. There’s no narrative reason to show the transition scene, but here’s the thing: It’s funny to see an angry man running in flip-flops, even if we sympathize with him. No, especially if we sympathize with him.
The humor quotient isn’t quite as high as in “Sideways” (still Payne’s best movie), which features Paul Giamatti crazily dousing himself with a spit-bucket of wine and Thomas Hayden Church recounting being chased by ostriches while naked. But there are still a few seemingly random laughs that endear us to the characters. Several of them are keyed by Clooney’s reactions, or even just the idea that he has to react to something like his 10-year-old stuffing her swimsuit top with sand so she has “beach boobs.” Matt is completely in over his head dealing with his two daughters and his wife’s coma and overseeing his family’s land holdings. Like many Payne characters, he’s in a constant state of breakdown, yet he never actually breaks down, and we love him for that.
A lot of critics have noted that the performance of Shailene Woodley, as Matt’s 17-year-old daughter Alex, is a remarkable step up from “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” But here’s the thing: I bet it’s easier to give a good performance in a Payne movie than it is on a factory-produced TV series. His films are always filled with performances where you say “Wow, that performance was pretty good.” For example, Judy Greer plays the wife of the man (Matthew Lillard — also good!) who Matt’s wife was seeing, and I thought, “Wow, Judy Greer is quite good in this” — despite the fact that I had enjoyed her work in the past. Superstar actors also get absorbed into Payne’s movies, as is the case here with Clooney, Beau Bridges and Robert Forster to name a few.
It should be noted that “The Descendants” (based on a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings that I intend to check out) takes place in Hawaii, and combining Payne’s loving directorial eye with the lush setting is blatantly unfair to every other movie that came out in 2011. Plenty of other movies and TV shows have been set in Hawaii yet it’s accentuated here because the backdrop contrasts strikingly with the characters’ pain, muting it somewhat but ultimately making it stand out for the viewer. (In a voiceover, Matt eloquently shoots down the notion that Hawaiians are happier: “Paradise? Paradise can go f— itself.”)
“The Descendants” isn’t necessarily new or surprising, but it has such a deft touch that I fell completely under it’s spell. If you enjoy seeing life turned into art with that now-classic Alexander Payne touch, I think you will too. Shame on Fox Searchlight for not giving it a nationwide release, but if you get a chance, search it out in your nearest big city.