re: The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread

The Descendants As most of you know, Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with this statement: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Later in the story, Anna's adulterous lover, Vronsky, says this to himself in a revealing soliloquy: “They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.” I couldn't help but be reminded of Anna Karenina as I uncomfortably sat through The Descendants. Always, it seems, those caught up in the power of adultery's lure learn to distort what happiness is, forsaking or confusing it with sensual pleasure. They create a non-sense world for themselves where the corrupt becomes the pure and the pure becomes trivial. Only when this world faces the reality of our true world does the self-constructed, delusional world fall apart. It falls apart because no others exist in the world of delusion. The others, those in the world of reality, have by their very existence the ability to shred the delusion to nothingness.

To see similarities with a classic work of literature is not to say that The Descendants is a good film. It's not by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems the writer relies heavily on Tolstoy's family drama. Accept the sex reversal: Vronsky is played by the deceitful wife of George Clooney, the affable, devoted cuckold with a heart of gold. Anna is not a suitable comparison for George. The twist comes in that the antagonist of the film is a vegetable, unable to defend any sin, unable to apologize, unable to do anything. And maybe this is where we learn the the film's most important lesson, a lesson that our judicial branch codified in the 1960s: you have the right to remain silent, and anything you say can be used against you in court. For the guilty, silence is the best response because guilt cannot be rationalized. Attempts to make guilt less guilty end in belittling the crime or in continuing to injure the wounded.

It takes the film a needlessly long time to get there. The audience, for our part, is forced to trudge through about 90 minutes of the most pointless adventure ever written. The quest in this movie is only there to extend the length. Honestly this movie feels like a wannabe intellectual's sitcom. It did not need to go more than thirty minutes, but it did, and insults everyone thanks to it. There are way too many twists and turns, too many ridiculously unbelievable situations, dripping in hyperbolic irony. Clooney, as usual, is his smug, self-important self. I really cannot see why he's considered a good actor. He's a money maker, sure, but a bad actor. He lacks the intelligence and gravitas to pull off this role. In the mirror, I'm sure he sees a top one percenter, but I doubt his IQ is above 110. He just rubs me as a someone who thinks he's much smarter than he really is. Trust me, I know a lot about that.

Amongst the most uncomfortable elements of this movie was the relationship Clooney has with his daughter. She's a recovering drug addict and still in high school, but is used the entire time as a sex symbol. It's a little worrisome when a director is making a movie about death, adultery, and attempts at reconciliation to use a character who is supposed to be in high school as a sex symbol. It's hard, for me at least, to come away wanting to accept what he has to say about the important things in life when he gets the little things so wrong. Anyway, the daughter has an Electra complex, and it appears, Clooney is more than happy to encourage and foster it.

The end is fairly predictable. But there is some intrigue left as the movie rolls into the credits. Is this a family now happy because it is focused on something else, the same thing on which other happy families focus. Or is this a family uniquely unhappy? I believe it's the latter. 3/10