George Clooney is one of those instantly-recognizable actors. By this point in his career, he’s more famous as himself than as any one character, and he can sometimes seem larger than life. He is usually typecast as suave, charming, and has only grown into that style as an actor since his breakout role on the TV show ER.
There are many roles Clooney has played in his long career. His serious role in the war movie Three Kings was memorable for being his breakout role away from ER, and proving his skill as an actor as the vulnerable but selfish Major Gates. And his lead role in the Coen Brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? is one of his most well-known. He is eccentric and highly entertaining as Ulysses Everett McGill in this Odyssey adaptation.
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But, above these and all his other performances, it’s his role in the comedy-drama The Descendants that is his best. Directed by Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, Sideways), The Descendants was highly praised when it came out, and is considered one of Payne’s best movies. The story is based on a book of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings, and the plot seems familiar and understated at first. It’s a movie about love and family, and the way tragedy ripples through a family.
The story is centered around Matt King (played by Clooney), whose wife is in a coma after a boating accident. He has to be there for his daughters and juggle a huge business deal, all while discovering the extent of his wife’s affair and managing the trauma and heartbreak around the tragic event. It’s not especially unique, but something about the author’s well-written story is compelling from the very beginning. And the film managed to capture that feeling. The Descendants was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay (which it won), Best Director, and Best Actor - for Clooney. He also won a Golden Globe for his role, as well as other awards. The movie was considered the best movie of 2011 by publications such as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.
And it’s easy to see why Clooney received these awards and nominations. He is by turns grieving, determined, resigned, angry, defeated, and more. The character is complex, and Clooney manages to communicate that complexity exceedingly well. As Roger Ebert said in his review, “Some actors may not be smart enough to sound convincing; the wrong actor in this role couldn’t convince us that he understands the issues involved. Clooney strikes me as manifestly the kind of actor who does. We see him thinking, we share his thoughts, and at the end of ‘The Descendants,’ we’ve all come to his conclusions together.” And the review from Rolling Stone said that Clooney’s performance was “the finest, truest and most emotionally raw performance of his career. Clooney has never exposed himself to the camera this openly, downplaying the star glamour and easy charm. Even the laughs come with a sting.”
A Drama with a Touch of Comedy
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Set in the paradise location of Hawaii, The Descendants is described as a comedy-drama, though it is probably about 90% drama and 10% comedy. However, the split makes the funny moments in the movie that much better, framed as they are around grief and heartbreak.
Most famous, perhaps, is the scene where Matt (Clooney) is spying on the rental house of the man with whom his wife had an affair. He slowly hides behind a bush as he watches them, conveying a mixture of suspicion, anger, and curiosity. The silliness was so memorable that the scene has now become an internet meme.
An earlier scene shows Matt after his eldest daughter Alex (played by Shailene Woodley) informs him of his wife’s infidelity. He tells her to watch her younger sister Scottie (Amara Miller). Then he gets up, walks out of his house, and begins to run. It’s an awkward, panicked run, as he beelines it for his friends house. He comes off as a dad, lost in the grip of fear and anger and confusion, but also somehow evoking laughter with the oddness of it.
Clooney manages to walk this tightrope between comedy and drama beautifully. It’s a delicate place to be, especially in what is otherwise such a sad movie. But he somehow draws on the quirkiness of his role in Fantastic Mr. Fox only two years earlier, as well as his silly yet serious role in O Brother Where Art Thou? ten years before. It’s a special kind of blend that only someone like Clooney could pull off, and this movie is one of the best examples of it.
A Widowed Husband
The inciting incident of the movie is the accident that puts Matt’s wife Elizabeth in a coma. Matt soon gets the news that the coma is permanent. His wife has a Do Not Resuscitate order, meaning the doctors have to take her off the machines keeping her alive, and in a few days, she will die. The film moves through Matt breaking this news to his daughters, then extended family. There are two other plots that move parallel to the evolution of Elizabeth’s death: the discovery of his wife’s affair, and a pending sale of a large piece of pristine, untouched land on Kauai. All three plots come together by the end of the movie.
The affair is especially difficult for Matt, who goes back and forth about wanting to find and confront the man she cheated with. He is heartbroken over the realization that it wasn’t just an affair - she was in love with the other man, and was going to divorce King. At one point he is alone in the hospital room with his unconscious wife, and he just starts venting all of his pain to her - his anger with her over the affair, his confusion and betrayal, and underneath it all is the grief and sorrow. It’s also obvious that he loves her, in spite of what she did.
A Father and His Daughters
The heart of the movie is about Matt and his two daughters, and how they are brought together by this tragedy. They were all distanced from each other before the accident - Matt was away often and working too much; the eldest daughter Alex, was off at a boarding school to deal with drug and alcohol problems, and the youngest, Scottie, had been acting out at school and struggling with her anger. They are brought together like survivors to a floating raft, and they lean on each other as they get through this dark period in their lives.
Matt relies on Alex the most, asking her to watch Scottie at times, or seeking her advice on what to do about his wife’s affair. Clooney’s portrayal of Matt’s deep feeling of being lost and adrift in his life is palpable. The interactions between Clooney and the two actresses playing his daughters are familiar, reminiscent of family and the struggles and pain involved. By the end of the movie, we see Matt and his daughters watching a movie together. They are quiet, and still, almost empty, as their new reality as a family together begins. This film takes a complex and painful story and weaves it into something that is paradoxically heartbreaking, and also beautiful. And Clooney’s performance is a large part of why it worked so well. Of all his movies, it is the most moving, and the best performance of his career.
