Clooney at his brilliant best in The Descendants

Chennai: If George Clooney is the main reason for you to watch “The Descendants,” you have abundance of him in the film. Almost the entire film is shot on him and you get to watch him up close - in medium shots and close ups. Besides a gracefully middle-aged Clooney in close proximity, you also get to watch his Oscar-probable brilliance that oscillates between intense personal pain and uneasy comicality.

Even while we are unconsciously transfixed on George Clooney, or Matt King, the central character he plays in the film, for he is the one who takes the movie forward, a hugely gifted Shailene Woodley (The Secret Life of the American Teenager), who plays his daughter, disturbingly enters the frames and keeps pace with him. Their screen-space progressively builds up, bringing along some finest characters on the way, and in the end we feel a sense of redemption. What a performance by Clooney! And Woodley.

The Descendants is about family, tenuous relationships and tragic losses, a lot of which avoidable, that one suffers within the family.

Matt King is nursing his comatose wife Elizabeth (Patricia Haste) who suffered brain damage in a boat accident. He has two girls - Alex (Woodley) a rebellious teenager who is struggling to come to terms with a lot of personal angst, and a pre-teen scottie (Amara Miller) - whom he struggles to bond with while nursing them through this period of grief. He also has to come to terms with the slowly evolving details of an affair that his wife had behind his back besides dealing with a massive property deal that could make him and his extended family millionaires. Then, in a typical Pacific island setting, there is his extended family, a sense of lineage and history, friends and the unavoidable vacation-setting consisting of the ocean, pristine landscapes, ukulele bars and Hawaiian guitar.

Although the story appears seemingly simple, what makes the film a gripping personal experience is the complexity of relationships and the extremely measured care with with director Alexander Payne (Sideways) handles it. Through carefully crafted situations and a deft use of the tools of cinema, he handles this complexity artfully. And for that, the style of expression he chooses treads a tricky path that alternates between comedy and tragedy.

You will certainly get troubled and perhaps go through emotional gasps, but Clooney, Woodely, Miller and all the others will also make you laugh and recover. It’s a precarious form of expression, but Payne triumphs, thanks to Clooney, Woodely, the rest of the cast as well his technicians. The camera is straight and simple - no crazy angles and fancy shots. It in fact follows your heart, gets close to Clooney and his family and goes even closer and closer as we go along. It’s largely medium and close-up shots and one could sense close proximity to the characters as the film progresses, mainly because of the intelligent photography by Phedon Papmichael, whom we have seen earlier in Payne’s previous venture, Sideways. There are more close-ups when the emotions run high.

Another strength of the movie is the Hawaiian background score (performed by local musicians. Available literatures says that it is not similar to the music heard the ukuleles bars in the island). Whether it is the simple strumming or vocal renditions, it is both playful and soul-stirring, reflecting the mood of the film.

The relationships, while primarily focus on Clooney, his wife and children, are also about the adjunct characters. Interesting to note is is Alexa’s boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause), who appears sly to Clooney for paternal reasons and Elizabeth’s father. Sid’s interludes, although coming from an impish teenager who is disgusting to Clooney, are remarkably relieving. For instance, the scene in which a sleepless Clooney seeks his counsel in the middle of the night on his dilemma of dealing with a dying wife’s affair is unusual and insightful. Similarly, the intense pain in Elizabeth’s father that often takes a comic expression is hurting.

Finally all is well that ends well. Does it all end well? No spoilers here.

Still, the transformation of a Woodley from a foul-mouthed, spoiled private-school brat into a strong companion to her father, the levelling-up that takes place at various places including in the family of Elizabeth’s paramour and Clooney’s apparent abandonment of things redeems one. Then, there are these endearing moments of bonding and parenting. Vintage Clooney’s all-out performance rounds it up.

Four stars for Clooney, Woodley and Alexander Payne.