Viewing and Discussion: The Descendants

Jackie Mattfeld & Irv Siegel

Friday June 1, 7-10 pm

$15 pre or drop in

Based on Kaui Hart Hemming's loosely autobiographical novel with the same title, The Descendants manages to be both entertaining and serious.  In brief, the story could be summarized as a thoughtful examination of how a confluence of complex personal and professional circumstances in Matt King's (George Clooney) life, impose a series of difficult, value-laden choices that open his consciousness and cause a watershed in his personal journey.

In the opening moments of the film, we learn that Matt King is a successful lawyer specializing in land development and a member of one of Hawaii's first land-owning white families.  Matt's immediate family is 1950s traditional.  Matt is totally absorbed in his work and less than attentive to his wife, Elizabeth, and their children. Elizabeth, an unemployed homemaker, pursues excitement through sports. As the film opens, we see the boating accident that results in her being hospitalized in a permanently vegetative state. The couple has a 17-year-old daughter (Alexandra) at boarding school on another island, and a ten-year-old (Scottie) living with them.  Neither parent seems close to their children, and both girls are portrayed and as unhappy and difficult.

Matt serves as sole trustee of the extended family's trust, which includes 25,000 acres of magnificent, unspoiled land on a nearby island. At the time of his wife's accident, Matt and the other responsible members of the family are engrossed in discussion and close to deciding whether to sell off their inherited land for condo and resort development at this time. Matt is obviously anxious to do what is in the best interests of the majority of the extended family members, but displays no particular emotion for or against enabling the development of this last piece of Hawaiian paradise.

While coping with resolving the fate of the virgin land under his family's control, Matt must become a hands-on, single father. He must try to establish a genuine relationship with his children while they have to deal with anger and sorrow over their mother's situation. Simultaneously, Matt must also decide whether or when to honor Elizabeth's living will which requires that she not be kept alive if life support is required.  And in the midst of all this, Matt learns from Alexandra that shortly before her mother's accident, Alix had discovered that Elizabeth was having an affair.

The rest of the film traces Matt's evolving self-knowledge, his growing capacity for forgiveness, acceptance and emotional intimacy with those closest to him, and his renewed connection to and responsibility for the land of which he is Trustee.  The Descendants is a not-to-be-missed movie, and well worth seeing at least two or three times.   So we think you will have a particularly good time if you join us at the Center's June 1st Friday Night at the Movies.