The Descendants & men in crisis the films of Alexander Payne

Alexander Payne’s latest film takes audiences to a beautifully shot Hawaii and is a bittersweet tale that manages to balance humour and drama. As with Payne’s previous films, ‘About Schmidt’ and ‘Sideways’, ‘The Descendants’ charts the journey of a down-at-heel male character. In the case of this film, George Clooney plays Matt King, a cuckolded husband and father of two girls. Matt and his wife have drifted apart and he feels unable to take care of and relate to his daughters. When Matt’s wife is involved in an accident and suffers a terminal injury, he becomes the sole carer of his daughters. He also discovers his wife had been unfaithful with a Hawaii real estate agent and decides to journey with his daughters to a neighbouring island to confront his wife’s lover and tell him of her condition. Added to this and hence the film’s title, Matt is the sole trustee of a huge expanse of Hawaiian land handed to him from his ancestors and the film also charts the decision Matt must make between leaving the land in its current unspoilt state or selling it to developers- a sale which would add to his already considerable wealth and also that of his extended family.

Having seen Alexander Payne’s most recent and well-known films, The Descendants follows in much the same vain as those before it. Much of this film’s humour is generated from the fallibility and vulnerability of its central male lead. Like Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) in About Schmidt and Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) in Sideways, Matt King lacks confidence due to the hurt he has suffered from those closest to him and also the stubbornness and inflexibility that dominates his behaviour.

Payne’s films begin as the central male characters are nearing some kind of emotional breaking point. In About Schmidt, Warren’s wife has died and his relationship with his only child is distant while in Sideways, Miles’s wife has left him and his desire to be a writer is tempered by his lack of self-belief and inability to recover when rejected by publishers. The circumstances of both men coupled with their fragile mental states actually create a plethora of funny moments when these fragilities are tested such as Warren comically attacking the man his wife slept with and Miles pouring a wine tasting spit-bucket into his mouth, onto his clothes and eventually over his head as his exasperation reaches breaking point.

Payne’s men are depressed without their situations being hopeless. His recent films chart men who have homes and security but whose depression arises from their sense of dissatisfaction- existential angst perhaps. It says a lot for the skill of the filmmaker that he is able to generate audience sympathy and emotional investment from characters whose outward situations seem so comfortable and in the case of Matt King in The Descendants, so wealthy. Matt King, however, is frugal. A beautifully observed moment shows Matt in his very basic office eating a bleak looking packed lunch while his voiceover tells the audience of the kind of wealth he has and what he has inherited. He says he follows the motto of ‘giving his daughters enough money to do something but not enough to do nothing.’ This is all very true and noble but Matt’s restraint and self-imposed frugality seem to be hindering his sense of self satisfaction and adding to the sense of caution that is the cause for his unhappiness. Matt’s restraint with money inevitably leads to restraint in other aspects of his life and ultimately is the cause of his problems. Jokes are made throughout the film’s first act that if he’d ‘spiced things up’ in the bedroom or bought the things his wife wanted then their relationship would not have become so distant and perhaps she would not have been unfaithful or even had her accident. Matt King, like other Payne leads, is forced to face up to the worst aspects of his character and admit he needs to change the principles he has adopted in order to get close to those he loves to reach some kind of inner peace.

The Descendants, like Payne’s previous two films, is also a road movie, a journey of reflection and self-discovery for the male leads. About Schmidt follows Warren Schmidt as he travels across America in a Winnebago and Sideways follows Miles Raymond in his red Saab as he travels through California’s wine country. In the traditional road movie narrative tropes, these men are moving and going on a journey both physically and emotionally. The landscape is acting as a backdrop for self-reflection, a place that can be taken in and looked at as the thoughts that have brought these people here are churned over so they may come to terms with their existence and reach fulfillment. The Descendants is no different. As the film progresses, the shots of nature become more frequent and more static as the audience are given the same time to reflect as Matt King is. Matt is moving across Hawaii as he is on a journey and the longer the shots of nature become, the more their beauty can be taken in and the more Matt can reach his inner peace as he understands better what is around him and consequently more about himself.

The Anguish of Life via 'Sideways', 'Fargo' and fried chicken shops

I kicked an old woman the other day.  On a busy street.  I clipped her heel as I strode past to the tube station.  As young arseholes are apt to do.  That's what she was probably thinking, 'Young yob who hasn't the sense to slow down when he walks past a mature woman like me'.  That's my patronising view of how old ladies think.  'Ooooh!' she exclaimed as I swung round, apologetic and, above everything else, terribly embarrassed.  'This is awful,' I was thinking, 'I've just kicked a pensioner in broad daylight'.  I felt bad for her, utterly guilty, as I understood how frail she was.  How a quick clip in the heel could really smart.  She rubbed her heel and glared at me and I apologised some more.  Clearly in shock, she didn't want some young buffoon apologising to her.  Like a cat, dragging it's wounded body home and hiding in a bush by the back door, the woman wished to suffer in solitary.  I asked her if she was alright and she brusquely nodded, trying to shoo me away.  Again I asked her and she repeated her action.  She didn't want to have to exchange pleasantries because I was trying to be nice to her; she wanted to be angry with me, wanted to have a figure to level her hatred at.  She wanted me to F-off so she could start swearing until she was blue in the face.  She wanted me out of her sight.  She was full of pain and rage and the abrupt shock it caused.  Like the time I banged my head on the corner of the mantle piece and screamed 'FUCK OFF!!' at my little sister when she asked if I was alright.  I was too angry for sympathy then and so was this old lady now.

I turned around and continued my walk to the tube station.  I'd done something that made me look careless, stupid and pathetic all at the same time, without any malicious intent whatsoever.  It was a cruel joke on both me, and the old lady, although arguable her experience was slightly more unfortunate.  Marginally.  The nature of her reaction allowed me no avenue of apology, no Get Out Of Jail Free card; she clearly nursed ill feeling toward me, and she was completely defenceless.  I had no leg to stand on.  I had to let it lie; an embarrassing flaw in the days events, yet another incident in a long line that clarified for me the absolute indifference of the world.  Now obviously there are far greater global tragedies which prove this, don't get me wrong, I'm not equating this with a cataclysmic nuclear fallout or tsunami; but as well as wreaking havoc and stealing away loved ones, life frustrates and disturbs like a mild rash.

Being a blog dealing in film and music I'd better crowbar in something to do with film or music.  Well, two, or should I say three, film writer/directors who have a splendid knack for capturing this tragic-comic cruelty are Alexander Payne and Joel and Ethan Coen.  Mentioned in a previous post by my co-blogger CharlieGD, Alexander Payne's Sideways has some fantastic examples of characters on their knees (metaphorically speaking) getting their faces rubbed in it, most of the time by television.  When middle-aged melancholy loser Miles (Paul Giamatti) and his sleazy, idiotic friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) sit in Mile's sweet, gawky mothers living room, a documentary about the Third Reich plays on the TV.  What is it about this that exemplifies the tragic everyday cruelty I'm talking about?  It's a number of elements: that neither Miles nor Jack could control or predict what would be playing on the television and therefore anticipate that a subject so dark could be implemented at such a plain moment, simultaneously the dreadfulness of the subject matter is relegated to a much more mundane setting, robbing Hitler and his crimes of their true atrociousness, because we are watching two middle-aged men sitting in a messy, kitsch living room.  There is already a melancholy feel to the situation because Miles seems to be pit-stopping at his mothers (Mary-Louise Burke) for her birthday out of convenience: we see him quickly writing her birthday card as he and Jack walk to her door, brandishing a bouquet of flowers with the barcode still on it, and yet she is overjoyed to see them; an eccentric old lady who lives alone and is still in her dressing gown when she answers the door.  For the horrific magnitude of Hitler and his crimes against humanity to rudely intrude upon this sad mother and son situation is farcical, but entirely plausible.  It is also a beautifully simple device: Payne merely inserts that one shot of the TV and the joke is concrete, the image of Hitler speaks for itself.  He is history's greatest monster, the face of evil, and he's there, in Mile's mum's living room, amongst the kitsch trinkets on the mantel piece, dopey looking photos of a younger Miles, and a mother's son who hates himself for his inability to be honest with her.

This is what society has been building for the last 10,000 years; a television, a channel, a documentary telling a piece of history, a living room, a helplessness to prevent any of these elements from converging in mundane tragedy.  One of those moments in life that everybody notices but ignores, trying not to make eye contact with anyone else, not even a close friend.  It's far too embarrassing.  The ability of television and it's capacity to throw the pathetic awfulness of a situation into bleak relief features throughout Payne's film.  Later, as Miles curls up into a ball in the motel bedroom, cowering at the hilariously chaotic and painful events unfolding around him as Sideways collapses towards its finish, we see a garish fitness video play on the TV.  Gross blonde men in spandex thrust their bodies to rude, pumping music; working wonders cinematically.  At another point Henry Fonda delivers his affirming speech ('Wherever you can look, wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there.  Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there...') from The Grapes of Wrath while Miles sits in front of the same motel TV, watching it despondently.  What is otherwise a powerful and emotional moment from John Ford's classic, is reduced to boorish nothingness, another moment when the world thrusts upon us something unwanted, at the wrong time.

The intrusion of the mundane world, whether it be a framed photo of Vladimir Putin (Burn After Reading) or a servile shop attendant (Fargo) is something Joel and Ethan Coen factor into most of their films.  In Fargo, after Jerry Lundegaard (William H Macy) has had surely the worst meeting of his life with his domineering father-in-law (Harve Presnell) and his father-in-law's accountant (Larry Brandenburg), discussing the arrangements of paying off the kidnappers who have snatched away Jerry's wife, Jerry having hired them to do it, they go to pay at the diner cash till and an obsequious cashier asks Jerry 'And how is everything today?' in a pink voice that would make a cat scream.  This innocent till attendant couldn't ever fathom what conversation Jerry has just been having, and the cringe factor is heightened by her ignorance.  After weeks of her managers drilling into her the importance of smiling at customers and asking them how they are, today this trivial attitude comes sliding up against someone who's pathetic life is falling apart.  Again the contrast between  the absolutely vapid sentiment of her question and the spiralling turmoil of Jerry's existence makes my blood squirm and weep.  Her question also seems to somehow implicate Jerry in the tragedy that is unfolding (and will reach a gruesome end) and rightfully so.  It's a sly and hilarious technique, and completely believable and true to life.  How many times does this sort of thing happen?  Is there a world of McDonald's employees, charity street workers and door-to-door salesmen unwittingly colliding with tragic, debt-ridden fathers, rape victims and grieving spouses?  Newly orphaned children, call centre employees, recently made redundant men and phone shop assistants, all in a big, messy tumble dryer of grief and 20% discounts?  Yes there is, it's our world.  We live in a crazy mixed up world, someone once said, probably.  There's no allowances.

I don't want to keep you any longer, but I must mention one of the saddest things I ever bore witness to.  About six years ago I traipsed up to the local chicken joint on a Wednesday evening to buy some chips for dinner.  The take-away sits almost opposite where, years later, I would kick an old lady in the heel.  As I waited for my food, looking out at the busy street in front of me, the tube station opposite and the waning sunlight, another old lady trembled into the chicken shop.  When she got to the counter and ordered her box of hot wings I could tell she was a regular, her and the man behind the counter nodded at each other and said hi.  He asked how she was.  'Okay', she replied, and I could already hear the quiver in the back of her throat.  I turned my head slightly to listen.  'I just got back to from the hospital', she continued, 'Oh yeah?' the chicken employee replied, disinterested but being polite.  'My husband,' the old lady said, 'he's just died, I just got the bus back from the hospital'.  The employee didn't know what to say.  I felt a wash of heaviness drag through my body.  The old lady was crying now, 'Forty years we were married'.  'And where's your family?' I thought.  But that's it isn't it?  That's just it.  There's no explanation for this, it just is.  She's just said goodbye to her soul mate, then she got the bus back and picked up some chicken on the way home, from a cheap little dump like this.  And then it's back to the house by herself with her dinner.  He was there last night and now he's not, but the chicken shop continues, a rude reminder that nothing matters.  And I watched her dodder out, and I felt strange, shocked and slightly upset.  And then I took my chips and went home.