Descending into Boredom

I don't know why I ever trust the people who choose Oscar nominations. They are so narrow-minded to begin with, looking for a particular type of movie to fit in with their categories. But it's not just that they close themselves off to the awesomeness of certain types of movies that gets me. It is the movies that end up being picked, even often end up winning the Oscars that truly blow my mind (in a bad way).

Take, for example, The Descendants. You can't really say that it had a great cast. Yes, there was George Clooney, who is a stud and is awesome. I am not denying that fact. But he was expected to carry the show on his name alone, and he actually didn't pull off a great performance. I thought that the girl who played the older daughter was halfway decent, but I found Clooney to be, frankly, flat. His character was supposed to be dull, work obsessed, I get that. But when he finds out that plot to the entire story, it should kind of shake things up a little. Which he tries to do. And fails. His character never seems to move out of first gear and it makes the show painful to watch.

Then there comes the story. The story which does seem to get into second gear with a lot of effort and then still goes absolutely nowhere. For those who do not know what the movie is about, I will tell you no more than what you see in the trailer. It is about a man (Clooney)  whose wife ends up on life support in a hospital when she gets into a boating accident. He is left to look after the two children while he tries to sort out his life, his wife's affairs and sell a large piece of land that he and his family have inherited through the generations. Oh, and he finds out that his wife has been cheating on him. This is all in the trailer, as I said, so I have given absolutely nothing away there. And the sad thing is, there is nothing more to give away. That is the entirety of the movie, squashed into a 3 minute trailer that was far more entertaining than the two and a half hour show. It suggests interesting topics, but the interest never materialises.

Of course, taking  place in Hawaii, you always knew that it was going to be a visual movie, a movie filled with timelapses and beautiful scenery. Which it was, to some extent. But I could appreciate the vastness of the land and the beauty of it more when it was integrated into the story. Like when Clooney and his daughters are  looking over the land that belongs to them, contemplating what selling it would mean, and the camera pans over the land numerous times - you can see why it would be something difficult to let go of, and you can see why the land should be treasured. You can't see that so much when the scene changes randomly to clouds floating over the ocean or over the shoreline. A lot of the most beautiful, most visual scenes are completely separated from the narrative, and it feels like they have just been put there to be pretty. Beauty is one thing, but it should add to the movie rather than be placed there for beauty's sake.

As you can tell, The Descendants did not meet my expectations. And that is the problem with the movies that are chosen for the Oscars. They are chosen for reasons that we are not aware of, and they raise your expectations for the films. Expectations that are often not met. Perhaps they should have a category for dull artsy movies that make you think twice about life. I would certainly put this and Never Let Me Go into that category.