The Descendants

The Descendants is an Oscar winning film about the heirs of one of Hawaii's largest plots of land.  It tells the story of Matt King, a father trying to hold his family together while his wife wilts away in a hospital bed.

What would be paradise, turns into Matt's own personal prison. He and his young, rebellious daughter, Scottie, hop islands to pick up her older sister from boarding school, and bring her home to see her mother. However, in view of her mother's almost certain death, she reveals to her father that she wasn't the saintly mother Matt remembered her as.  She was having an affair.

***Warning, Spoilers Ahead!***

Matt, with family in tow, seek out his wife's lover, who happens to be the real estate agent associated with the billion dollar land trust his family is selling.  What starts off as a journey of curiosity and petty revenge, turns into a place of understanding and forgiveness.  Matt sees his wife's lover's family and decides not to blow their father/husband's secret.  They actually look happy together and Matt doesn't want to spoil it for them.

What this film is really about is the tension between desperately wanting to preserve something and needing to let it go.  When his wife first has her accident, Matt is hopeful that things will return to normal shortly.  However, the doctors deem her brain dead, and per her wishes, they are required by law to take her off of life support.  Meanwhile, Matt is struggling with wanting to preserve his family's land and balancing the needs of the trust.

With his wife's deteriorating state, he decides to give everyone who loved her a chance to say good-bye and grieve, instead of continuing to hold out for a miracle that would never come.  He lets go of his wife, but decides to keep the property because it is part of his life and something that can be preserved--and should be preserved--for future generations.

I saw the film when it was released in 2011, and read the screenplay last night. If screenwriters want to perfect their craft, the best way to do so is to read the good, the bad, and the ugly.  This one was phenomenal. I read it into the wee hours of the morning and found myself, at 3 am, weeping.

That is powerful; how can the few words between FADE IN and FADE OUT have so much of an affect on someone?  How can a few loglines and chunks of dialogue bring a reader to tears? That should be the goal of every screenwriter: to picture a story so beautifully that they are brought into the emotional roller coaster ride.

Ultimately, as screenwriters, our job is to win over the heart of a producer by allowing them to personally connect with the story.  If he or she isn't laughing, crying, or shaking their fist in anger, then we have failed at our craft.

You can read the script for free here.