the descendents

i think that was a pretty good movie. it was beautifully humble about the inelegance of suffering people. they're crude and awkward and difficult to watch. julie's bedside rant was perfect in its inadequacy, in how it made me cringe. she was utterly unequal to the moment and that's an important and worthy truth, not a failure but a backhanded triumph. in an early scene when matt king throws the teddy bear across the room, i thought of marlon brando's character at the bedside in last tango in paris. not because matt king in that moment is anything like that but because he's the opposite. his grief and fury are outwardly manifest in this awkwardly manageable way. i didn't feel intimidated by him or his feeling, i pitied him. it didn't have any of the terrifying power of brando's character in that situation, it was just a pitiable man. and that's an honest insight. grief doesn't turn that ordinary man into anything other than the somewhat facile and containable person he is.

i don't know what they were going for with all the shots of beautiful hawaii. i thought they were experimenting with the effect of tourism footage juxtaposed with some sad shit. were they insulting their movie with the fact that hawaii looks fucking terrific and that i pretty instantly forgot any sadness looking at those vistas?

the young people in this movie, and especially the humor the movie tries to wring from them, is some really dumbass shit. they're young people as imagined by middle aged people convinced that them-youngsters-do-the-darndest-things. sid is especially intolerable and unreal, especially in the way he interacts with matt king.