impressed by The Descendants

It still feels like a luxury to sit down to a movie that I know absolutely nothing about. Somehow I completely missed the fact that it has been nominated for 4 Oscars; best picture, actor, screenplay and director! But this time, I am totally in accordance with these nominations and really hope that some are actually achieved. This film challenged my intellect and emotions while providing visual and auditory entertainment. Classic scenes of Hawaiian beaches, coupled by a superb assortment of Hawaiian shirts and matching cool outfits and haircuts are complemented by what seems to be local folk music. And then of course Clooney is so enjoyable to watch - and this time his acting is truly engaging... As a workaholic lawyer he has ignored his wife and family - but is jolted back when his wife is comatose after a waterskiing accident - he makes the classic promise that he will change his ways - but alas - too late. So instead he has to pick up the pieces of his life and work with them as best he can - and I think he does this brilliantly. His younger daughter Scottie is very precocius and the elder daughter Alex is doing drugs and drinking out of control at a private boarding school when he picks her up. But of course this challenge brings out their best! However there are some classic scenes - when he tells Alex that her mum is dying and minutes later she tells him that her mother was having an affair. So George demonstrates how he manages his ego in his search for and confrontation with the married lover, assisted by his daughter...and of course there is a little twist in the tale that makes the story believable... and underneath is the contrast between a woman who has made an advanced directive to turn off the life support with Alex's boyfriend who is homorously concrete...