The descendants

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

It's one of those not-so-old movies that you pick up in curl-up-in-bed weather like in recent days, and watch again, without the benefit of promotional media to tell you what to expect, and so you experience sheer, unalloyed pleasure.

“The Descendants,” an Oscar best picture nominee for last year, is an outstanding comedy-drama about a neglectful husband and father whose wife figures in an accident that renders her a vegetable.

With his wife in coma, Hawaiian land baron Matt King, played with heart, fire and soul by George Clooney must now pick up the pieces of his life as husband and father. On top of this, Matt also has to grapple with the question whether to sell their ancestral land for commercial development or not. Set in scenic, tourist draw Hawaii, the movie is an engaging, heartfelt translation of Kaui Hart Hemmings' novel with the same title.

Forgive my ignorance, but I can only identify Clooney and a now-stout Beau Bridges among the cast. That aside, the entire cast comes up with outstanding performances to match Clooney's, giving us a film that pulsates with beauty in its simplicity.

With no fireworks and magic to fall back on, the movie relies solely on the power of its story, brilliant acting – the actors who play the King children are fantastic – and dynamic camerawork to keep us engaged and interested. Of course, the Hawaiian backdrop is nice, but director Alexander Payne wisely keeps it as locale of the story, and so it does not distract.

The story begins with the boating accident of King's wife, deftly shown by Payne in a series of close-ups of her riding the waters which abruptly blacks out, and then cuts to the next shot. There are no hysterics here, none of the blood and gore – she was supposed to have fallen on something hard and broken her nerves. But we got the point right away, setting the tone for the rest of the film – this is a family drama, after all, but this one is going to be told intelligently, without the ranting and raving nor wailing and weeping.

But don't think that because we live in Hawaii, we're having one long vacation, King declares. Don't think our pain is any lesser, or our loneliness any less sharper, he also says.

Indeed, if King and his kin are descendants of Hawaiian royalty, and have something like 25,000 acres of beautiful land in their trust, they grapple as well with issues like love, fidelity, family, friendship, life and death.

The story speeds along when it is revealed that Clooney's wife, now comatose in the hospital and will soon die, was, in fact, having an affair with a real estate agent at the time of her accident. The agent, by the way, is the brother-in-law of the prospective developer of the King property, and stands to make plenty of moolah if the family decides to sell it.

King was clueless about the affair, until his own daughter tells it to him straight. In fact, King, steeped in his business, was clueless on everything else in his life aside from work.

The story revolves around how King rediscovers his wife and children, and how he discovers the other facts about his family and life. He even looks for his wife's lover, to give him a chance to say goodbye to her, he says, but really, to put the jigsaw puzzle of his life together. In a sense, it takes his wife's accident and dying to bring home – physically, emotionally and figuratively.

It's the kind of movie that doesn't really take your breath away but leave you feeling renewed in your humanity.

Watch it, especially if “Gener” decides to stay for a day longer and you have to stay indoors.*

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