50 STATES 50 MOVIES: HAWAII

In The Depth Of Paradise, A Struggle With 'What Is,' 'What Was' and 'What Will Be.'

The Descendants

There are moments when my mind wanders and I think about the fact Hawaii is a state. Did our Founding Fathers ever ponder that the country they founded would grow so large that a Polynesian kingdom thousands of miles away on the other side of the world would one day hold the same status as Virginia? I think about how the first Americans in the 18th Century almost certainly didn’t even know Hawaii existed. James Cook landed on the islands two years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

I’ve had to privilege to visit Hawaii myself. My aunt and uncle abruptly moved there from a dying Rust Belt city in 1995. They went on a whim. Six years later, my entire family went to the islands to take a cruise (on the same ship that took Grace Kelly to her wedding in Monaco in 1956). I was in Hilo during a teacher’s strike. During an excursion to see some of the Big Island’s majestic waterfalls, we got caught up in one of the protests; striking teachers blocked the road for 30 minutes. On the bus, I looked over to my aunt, the sister of the aunt who lives in Hawaii, and she shook her head.

“I guess they have those problems here too,” she said.

They do. Hawaii is what we think of when we think of paradise. But it’s still part of our society and has always dealt with the same social problems we do.

How Hawaii came to be the 50th State isn’t a very positive story either. Formerly an independent Polynesian kingdom with little contact with the outside world, that changed in the mid 19th Century. There was money to be made on the islands and American businessmen flooded the independent kingdom in the 1800s to take advantage of the unique resources there. In short, they had pineapples. The island of Molokai became a leper colony, a place for our cruel society to dump those we feared and was disgusted by. Later, the American government saw the strategic importance of the island as part of the growing American sphere of influence in the Pacific. In 1893, the Americans conspired to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy and annex the islands as a territory, which they remained for the next half-century. The American government apologized for this a century later.

Then came World War II. The large natural lagoon that makes up Oahu’s Pearl Harbor, and its strategic location in the heart of the world’s largest ocean, became the perfect hub for the United States Pacific Naval Fleet. The Japanese Empire, trying to assert its dominance over the Pacific, attempted to wipe out its main rival when it attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Hawaii’s importance and the price it paid during the war led to the movement to give the archipelago statehood. There was a lot of opposition to it, both on the mainland, who felt the islands were not culturally American, and on the islands, where natives feared statehood would further exacerbate the loss of traditional Hawaiian culture, already decimated by Western business interests. Nevertheless, Hawaii became the 50th State in 1959, and efforts to protect the island’s heritage got a new life after the 1993 government apology. Even Western transplants there today adopt some of the Hawaiian cultural staples. My family referred to our 2001 vacation as the “Ohana trip,” the word ohana meaning “family” in Hawaiian. My aunt wears mu-mus, sends a lei every year for my grandparents’ grave, and wishes us a Mele Kalikimaka every Christmas. It’s an ongoing battle that defines Hawaiian society even today, and it’s at the core of the storyline of my chosen film.

The Descendants, directed by Alexander Payne, is based on the novel of the same name by native Hawaiian author Kaui Hart Hemmings. The plot involves a wealthy Hawaiian lawyer who descends from the union of a Hawaiian princess and a western businessman during the 19th Century. The main character is struggling with the unraveling of his family and the pending sale of land he inherited from his Hawaiian ancestors to developers from the mainland.

The film opens with shots of people in Hawaii living in poverty, and struggling, similar to what you might see in a mainland city. Already we’re slapped with an uneasy reality about “paradise.” Our main character, Matt King (George Clooney) explains how living in Hawaii is not what it seems. The movie opens in a hospital room where Matt’s wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) is in a coma after suffering a devastating injury in a boating accident. Their marriage was on the rocks already and the two have two daughters in crisis; Alex (Shailene Woodley), who is 17, and Scottie (Amara Miller), who is 10. Scottie is acting out in school and comes across as a budding sociopath. After bullying a classmate, Matt forces her to go to her house and apologize where the girl’s mother asked Matt “not to sell.”

Because of Matt’s Native Hawaiian ancestry, he is the sole trustee of 25,000 acres of land on the island of Kauai, but the trust is running out in seven years and he and his family are contemplating selling the land to developers who want to build resorts. It’s clear that the land is one of the last remaining connections to Hawaii’s traditional past, and if and when Matt sells it, it will just be another piece of Hawaii’s unique and colorful history being wiped away by Western society.

While out with Scottie, Matt runs into Troy (Laird Hamilton), who we discover was with Elizabeth during the boat crash that left her in a coma. Matt blames Troy for the crash and the two have an awkward moment that ends in Scottie running away in tears. Later, Matt takes her on an “island hopper” flight to the Big Island to see Alex, who is at a boarding school there. They find Alex drunk and rambunctious on the beach and take her back to Oahu to see her mother, who no longer has any hope of waking up. Alex is rebellious and repeatedly defies or challenges her father. While taking a swim in the pool, which had not been cared for recently probably due to Matt’s complicated life, Matt tells Alex that doctors had given up hope on her mother ever recovering and that she will die. This upsets Alex who later confesses that she and Elizabeth fought when they were last together. Alex had discovered her mother was having an affair – something that shocks Matt.

Angry, Matt jogs over to his wife’s best friend Kai’s house, where he pushes Kai (Mary Birdsong) and her husband Mark (Rob Huebel) to confirm the affair and tell him who it was with. Weirdly, Matt walks right into their unlocked house. Do people not lock doors in Honolulu? Matt, in a moment of anger, tells Kai that Elizabeth is going to die, upsetting her, and Kai responds maliciously, telling Matt his wife loved the other man and wanted a divorce. Mark, who feels for Matt, catches him outside as he is leaving to name the guy Elizabeth was having an affair with. A while later, Alex and Matt see the man’s name, Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), on a real estate sign. He’s a realtor. Matt, with the help of Alex, conspires to meet him by acting like an interested buyer but finds out he’s on Kauai. The Kings then fly to Kauai with the intention of meeting Brian and inviting him to say goodbye to Elizabeth. Alex brings along her socially-inept stoner friend Sid (Nick Krause) who at one point catches a beating both from Matt and Elizabeth’s angry father Scott (Robert Forster). Sid has an interesting character arc, from being a shit-stirrer with no filter at the start of the movie, to an emotional support system for the Kings at the end.

While in Kauai, the family visits the undeveloped land that they are selling. Alex reminisces about camping there with her mother, while Scottie notes she never had that experience. This hits Matt hard.

Later, Matt runs into Speer’s wife Julie (Judy Greer) on the beach with her sons and they have a pleasant conversation. It feels as if Matt wants to mention the affair, but he does not. Matt later meets his cousin Hugh (Jeff Bridges) who explains that the pending deal to sell their inherited land is with a developer who is Speer’s father-in-law and Speer is working on the deal as his agent. The news shocks Matt, who later goes with Alex to the cabin the Speers are renting to meet Brian. When they do, Matt and Brian had a conversation alone where Brian apologizes to Matt and confesses he doesn’t love Elizabeth, he loves his wife and kids. Matt then offers to let Brian go to the hospital to say goodbye to Elizabeth.

Angry about all this, Matt begins to handle each issue one by one. First, he has Elizabeth’s doctor explain to Scottie what is happening to her mother, which leads to an emotional scene where the gravity of the situation begins to settle in for Scottie. Scott, Elizabeth’s father, brings his wife, who is suffering from dementia to the hospital to see their daughter. Here, Scott admonishes Matt as a bad husband. Alex defends her father, with Sid backing her up, and it feels as if the truth about Elizabeth’s affair, which would break Scott’s heart, is about to come out. Matt doesn’t tell him though and instead accepts and agrees with Scott’s criticisms, allowing him to say goodbye to his daughter without having his image of her tarnished.

Then, as the Kings meet to finalize the sale of the land in Kauai, Matt, who is the sole trustee with the ability to block the sale, refuses to sell. Reminded that the trust runs out in seven years, Matt vows to find a way to extend it so his children can inherit it. Hugh threatens to sue, but Matt refuses to relent. The land will remain undeveloped.

Back at the hospital, Julie surprisingly shows up at Elizabeth’s bedside, telling Matt that she found out about the affair and felt she needed to visit when her husband wouldn’t. While tearfully speaking to Elizabeth, who remains comatose, she descends into an angry rant where she forgives Elizabeth for the trouble she caused in her marriage, leading to Matt ushering her out. I don’t know why we needed this scene, but I suppose it helps Matt come to terms with his wife’s infidelity. The family later says their goodbyes one by one and Elizabeth passes away. The movie ends with Matt, Alex, and Scottie spreading Elizabeth’s ashes from a wa’a, a traditional Hawaiian outrigger canoe, in the Pacific Ocean near Waikiki.

The Descendants is flooded with Hawaiian cultural elements, from Hawaiian music, played throughout the film, to the clothing – Hawaiian shirts, flip flops, and bikinis –even an appearance by Hawaiian Airlines. The movie never lets us forget where it’s set. When I was searching for the perfect Hawaii movie, I wanted something that either tells a story connected to the island’s disappearing cultural traditions and how they are constantly under threat by the modern world or a story about how life in paradise is still rife with the problems we see in our world. The Descendants do both. It feels like a movie with a plot that can take place practically anywhere, but the tie-in to Hawaii, a place that holds an almost supernatural place in the psyche of those who don’t live there, is a dose of reality. Even here, in the epitome of paradise where most of us fantasize about fleeing to escape the real world, actual real-world problems exist. There is poverty, there is heartbreak, there is drama, and there is social strife. The grass is not always greener on the “other side;” or in this case, lush islands in the tropical Pacific.