The Descendants

Movie	The Decendants
Director	Alexander Payne
Actors	George Clooney, Shailene Woodley,Amara Miller
Based on :	Novel ‘The Descendants’ by Kaui Hart Hemmings
FIVE Oscar Nominations	Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and two more

“Life is unpredictable for you. Don’t know what might happen tomorrow. It shocks you with twists; sometimes pleasant, sometimes heartbreaking, catches you unprepared and watches you grow, emerge stronger.”

George Clooney in The Decendants

The movie is directed by Alexander Payne and it is based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings with the same name.

Officially ‘The descendants’ is a comedy drama. In real, it is a serious and thoughtful movie. We all are set to watch the protagonist facing unpredictable challenges. Its George Clooney nominated for Best Actor Academy award 2012. He is acting as a Matt King – a rich and workaholic lawyer, father of two girls. His defiant indulgent wife catches in accident while motor-boat riding that leads her in coma. How Matt tries to set his house in order, nurture his daughters? How he tries to fill the absence of his wife? To know these answers, you should watch the movie. Among the chaos and uncertainties in life, Matt stands like an oak to challenge every problem in front of him. He shows confidence and courage single handedly. Behind his every faithful act, it shows a true love for her wife, irrespective of her painful disappointment.

Movie plot is filmed in the Hawaii Island. It is really awesome to watch Hawaii covered with lush green trees, cold atmosphere and beautiful beaches. Long edge of Hawaii beach, open blue sky and tides hitting the shore incessantly shows the continuity of life where there is no place for difficulties. It’s matter of continuous change.  Movie starts with saying; Hawaii is a paradise where different types of people survive there.

Movie Plot:

The Matt King, a rich lawyer was living happy life with his wife and two daughters. Matt used to deal with real estate agents. He was very hard working and was unable to give time for his family. Knowing this, one day He took his family on Hawaii Island for a vacation. On one unfortunate day, his wife was boating along the Hawaii beach. She caught in an accident due to motor failure. Accident threw her into permanent coma.  It’s an unpredictable crisis over Matt’s family. His both daughters were badly affected by this accident. It was the Matt, who thought to multiply his courage in danger. He told himself, “As soon as my wife awakes, I would do whatever she wants. I would take her to the place where she desires.” He was hoping for the best.  Next day, doctor said, she failed to show the consciousness. Her eyes and hands are not showing any movement. All efforts from our side are failed. There are very less chances to bring the consciousness into her. Doctor asked him to get ready for the situation, because his wife has very few days or maximum couple of weeks.  This made him alert. He tried to cover the absence of mother for his two daughters. He told himself as a backup parent.

He has two daughters- Scotty, 10 and Alex, 17. After Elizabeth’s accident, Scotty found doing foul behavior with her classmates. She started telling about the family crisis in the school. Couple of complaints received to Matt telling her mischievous behavior is spoiling other kids in the school. Matt had to visit the house of Scotty’s friend to apologize for her mistake. Elder daughter, Alex, had just entered in her teens. She had turned a drug addict and found heavily drunk many times with her boy friend. Reckless behavior of Alex was also affecting the younger daughter. Matt understood that this is the critical time. Both of his kids were not able to face the crisis. Only he had to look after both of them.

One day, Matt brings his elder daughter when she was heavily drunk and turned unconscious. On the next day he tried to ask her to abandon all this addiction and to forget the past fights between her and mother. Alex revealed, ‘Her mother is cheating her father. She had an affair with another man.’ It was a second painful shock to Matt, but he still loves her from the heart. He and his elder daughter set off the target to know about the person whom his wife liked. He runs and runs to know about the man, called Brian Seer – another real estate agent with whom her wife fell in love.

One day, while jogging early morning along the shore, Brian passes by him. He follows him hideously and reaches the hotel room where Brian enters. On that day he comes on the beach to relax and collects all the information about Brian from his wife. His elder daughter Alex accompanies Matt to trace all the information about Brian.

George Clooney, Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller

As his wife, Elizabeth has very few days left, it was required to host the family condolence event when all her relative can come and say good bye to her. In her absence, Matt had to take one of the major decisions in his life. Grandparents of Matt had bequeathed 25,000 areas of Hawaii land to his family. His land is spread along the Hawaii beach. Many industrialists are urging him to sell the land for construction of hotels and residential buildings. The selling of this land was going to give him huge sum of money.  Matt feels very absence of his wife in taking this decision. He plans to sell the land, but just before signing the papers, he listens to his heart and refuses to sell the land. He replies audaciously, “I am the sole owner of land that is inherited from the past generation and will hold the responsibility to protect the land until I am alive.”

Matt had invited many of his and Elizabeth’s relatives to meet and say adieu to her.  Matt took a kiss of the corpse uttering, ‘I love you. You are my love as well as pain.’ He had promised her to take responsibility to bring up her both the kids.  Movie ends when Matt leaves the ashes in the sea. All of them have accepted the change, where Elizabeth is no more, but Matt’s love for her is eternal.  Now, all of them have embraced the change.

The Tree of Life

Director & Writer	Terrence Malick
Actors	Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain
Oscar Nominations for	Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography

“The Tree of Life” is the philosophical and biological picturesque by Terrence Malick.  I’ve watched this movie long back and thought to write about it knowing it received 3 Academy award nominations in categories Best picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography. The name, ‘Tree of life’ stands for the apple tree from the Bible. Adam and eve ate the forbidden fruit and made the human race immortal. The movie explores the evolution of life on the earth that leads us to teach the purpose of our presence.

The Tree Of Life

The movie protagonist, Jack recalls his childhood memories of innocence and nurturing by his parent.  Brad Pitt acts as his father.  He remained nostalgic about his childhood in Texas. He was brought up in the middle class family lived in the home surrounded by Natural beauties in Texas. Jack tries to find the true meaning for his life in this modern world. His thoughts travel from the origin of life of the earth.

He remembers, his mother(Jessica Chastain) explains, “There are two ways in life, the way of nature and the way of grace. Chose one way, other will follow.”  She elaborates, “Grace doesn’t try to please it, it accepts insults and injuries.  Nature only wants to please itself, to lord over others, to have its way.”  Life is a process of deciding which of these paths to follow.  Jack’s mother embodies the way of grace, while his father embodies the way of nature. His father(Brad Pitt) says, “One day, His son will become strong and his own man. He will be able to fight life on his own. He will fall down and weep and understand.”

Life of human being is much similar to other animal. The man endowed bigger brain. It is the only fact that made the huge different in his life style.

Continuous thoughts made Jack to trace the root of everything i.e. root of universe. Bing bangs Theory that explains the galaxies and system of start, comets in motion.  Explosion of large mass generated the solar system.

The beautiful blue planet Earth has an essence of life. The most intelligent species that prospered on the earth is Human being. The movie shows the evolution of life that ends up with man. Life started with aquatic creatures, having tentacles that keeping them moving in water.  These creatures struggled to come out of water. Few crawled further between the dense green forest and turbulent running rivers. Serpents treading on surface of earth formed different groups having different capabilities. Few light weight lives received wings to fly in the sky. Few bodies rapidly grew forming mammoth like animals which were dinosaurs, elephant. The species that couldn’t come out of water remained powerful in their habitat in the form of magnificent sharks and octopus.  There were also animals with four limbs that used to jump around the branches of trees. These monkeys later could able to slouch over back limbs and front limbs were required to different sort of work. Chimpanzees later evolved in human being. All this transformation took billions of years.  If you watch, every life pictured in the movie has sympathy for their own race, tried to protect themselves. Every life protected their kids from danger. So, every life is guided by morals.

The stratosphere helps the growth of life. All this is creation of God. He lives in every human being. Devils show there in dangers. Movie has pictured the rise of human being, who is most dominating and intelligent. Later this man turned predator of animal, flora and fauna on the planet. In twenty first century, life of human being is suffering with many problems. Basic needs of food, shelter are scantily availed. Man has build sky rocketing buildings to occupy excessive fellow beings. Future generations are prone to suffer problems like food safety, pollution, water scarcity. In such time God is the only who could help us, guide us.  HE should teach us the better way of life.