Film Review: Fairhaven

Mid-Life Reunion

I first saw Fairhaven when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last April, and then I saw it again in early January. The reason for that distinction is because the plot takes place during the winter, in the harsh brittle cold of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. It’s the type of small film that can produce a very intimate and immersive experience and so needless to say, January helped my sentiment towards it. New England just makes you want to bundle up.

Fairhaven is director Tom O’Brien’s first feature length film and it’s a solid starting effort. He collaborated on the script and also shares a lead role with Chris Messina, one of the stronger actors in many smaller films this year. Messina plays Dave, the antagonist of sorts and springboard of the story. His father has died and so he returns to his small fishing town to old friends and memories. Someone posted in their own small review that the film feels like it could be a television series, and rightly so. A quasi-“Northern Exposure” of thirty-something friends nestled together for warmth and by their common past.

This is a very spiritual, searching film. O’Brien’s character Jon is the centerfold of the reunion of friends, a struggling poet making his means working on a fishing boat. In between exposition, he strolls around his neighborhood, pausing at the frigid beaches and high school football field. Jon, a former quarterback, has recently fallen into an existential wrestle with New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady’s comments during a recent interview in which he proclaimed that there had to be more to his life than just winning three Super Bowls. It’s something Jon professes to his therapist, caught in between his own search for meaning, his own fulfilling vocation, underneath the crippling nostalgia of his hometown.

It’s something he also converses over with his friends. They are Angela, his “open” girlfriend (Alexie Gilmore), Sam (Rich Sommer), and Sam’s ex-wife Kate (Sarah Paulson). Then of course there’s Dave, Jon’s closest friend and yet whose presence feels distant and obtuse. He arrives and immediately begins smoking weed, drinking alcohol, and finding fun at a strip club with Jon. He doesn’t greet his mother until the next day, someone he hasn’t forgiven since his father left her for another marriage. He is an unwilling participant, and uses the weekend to rehash high school glory; find girls, get wasted, don’t think about anyone else.

But everyone around him is grown up. Sam is a realtor and now single father, and has yet to rebound with another woman, an emptiness that tries to find substance at Dave’s irking. A guy’s night out climaxes (I use that word intentionally) in a revealing scene that Sommer and his date (Natalie Gold) handle with care. Kate is remarried to an older man and has settled down after a curious past with Dave, a subtle announcement he makes to Jon that threatens the integrity of their former group friendship. Jon is along for the ride in all this, tethered loosely to Angela, to life.

The script fluctuates with moments of crisp dialogue but sometimes devolves into staler conversations. In its off beats, it pauses for reflection much like its characters, pandering often to shots of the town and seascapes. I was reminded of Alexander Payne’s The Descendants in this way, in which scenes of lush Hawaii offered momentary bliss between dialogues. Here, the cold wintry neighborhood feels both calming and a place of psychological entrapment.

Dave, in his grisly look, urges Jon to “get out,” but look at what that’s done to him and his weakness to tempting vices. Sometimes however it takes a bulldozer to show just how weak one’s foundation really is. It’s fair to say these guy’s lives are under construction. But such is life; one step back, two steps forward.

3/5

In select theaters today and VOD everywhere on 1/15

 

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The Descendants Review: Burdened Father in Hawaiian Haven

New Yorkers, and east coasters in general, can be brutally honest, harsh, cold, edgy, passionate, and sometimes just downright rude. The west coast, well, it’s portrayed just a bit more laid back. So it makes sense that we think of Hawaii as a place full of mellow, easy-going people who relax, unwind, and lose themselves under the palm trees. Matt King, played reverently by George Clooney, however, wants us to forget this West Coast stereotype. “We have the same problems everyone else has,” he narrates from a Hawaii downtown office. He makes a valid point, but competing against the background of white sand and infinite ocean is not an easy task, even for George Clooney.

The stunning views of Hawaii become more than just the background in Alexander Payne’s latest feature (just like the vineyards of California in Payne’s Sideways). They play an integral role in the story- also penned by Payne, with Nate Faxon and Jim Rash- portraits of paradise that tamper with the prospect of nature and business, family inheritance and economical practicality. Payne induces exhales of beauty and brings in a quiet, celestial perspective. It keeps us mesmerized but more importantly balanced, because between these felicitous gaps remain lots of father-daughter arguments, unpleasant hospital visits, and a man trying to sort out his newly distorted world.

Director Alexander Payne at the 49th New York Film Fest

The Descendants, adapted from the book by the same name, beautifully collages filial strife over numerous outlets, all equally challenging and inspiring. Matt, from the very beginning must immediately learn to parent by his lonesome- the first shot captures the pre-injurious boating accident that his wife Elizabeth ”wave runs” into. She is sent to the hospital with a coma, leaving Matt to uphold their luxuriant, bohemian lifestyle. The wealthy property and land they own is an inheritance from Matt’s ancestors, now splitting the possession between he and his six male cousins. It’s 26 square acres of lush Hawaiian land, but Matt, the real estate lawyer in the family, sees it as too much of a burden to maintain, and with his relatives searches for a group to purchase the up-for-lease land. This decision curries displeasure from the natives, who foresee businesses and corporations exploiting the land with hotel chains and commercial shenanigans.

This, coupled with a deteriorating, unresponsive wife leads to some late nights and the resolution to have his two daughters be at home together. Matt brings his 10-year-old daughter Scotty (Amara Miller) to retrieve her older sister Alexandra (A glowing performance by Shailene Woodley) from the boarding school she resentfully attends. They return home bickering, disputing authority and exchanging acrimonious glances (all consumed in Alexandra’s farcically foul-mouth ). Clearly Matt, “the back-up parent,” is out of his fatherly element and must hurry to win back some credibility or keep aggregating more stress. The core agitation between dad and daughter is Matt’s marital blindness. In a fit of anger, surprise, and then curtained empathy, Alexandra reveals her mother’s infidelity to a bewildered, grieving husband. He humorously shuffles in his sandals to the neighborhood friends, and in a funny bit of affirmation, validates his wife’s misgivings- and even gets the offender’s name, Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard).

But what is Matt to do? His wife shows no signs of returning to a state of consciousness, and so his hospital visits become outbreaks of ire to Elizabeth’s unresponsive, altered mug. His marital state of perplexity complements his grizzled appearance, and Clooney masterfully highlights this cluelessness. He keeps Matt’s integrity however with sincere gazes, his eyes creating a pallet of fallibility and tenderness in which he mixes in varying proportions. Unaccustomed to striking the balance between grief and malice, Matt looks for a healthy catharsis. Alexandra, along with her indolent, happy-go-lucky sidekick Sid, persuades her dad to find Brian, confront him, and somehow earn back some dignity.

George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, and Amara Miller in "The Descendants"

They trip around the islands, getting clues to his whereabouts and subtly kindle paternal affection.  Matt’s search for the adulterer has an Hawaiian air to it- instead of a fast paced pursuit, Matt is content with strolling the sand, taking pleasure in his children in the midst of his own heartbreak. Payne uses his landscape to read between the lines, discretely hinting messages and morals with whatever surrounds his well-framed compositions. He splits his scenes with ethereal shots of the coast and sun setting sky, intimating that hesitant vengeance needs a chance to breathe in the salty air. With the landscape yearning affection, his meeting with cousin Hugh to establish the details of a hotel deal with some real-estate buyers seems to lose its sparkle. Traversing the land begins to forge a sentimental impact, and the cavernous outlooks of the coastline beckon reconsideration.

Matt’s challenge is deeper than the economical side of the deal. Payne pans over the household’s myriad of black and white family photos, forcing us to stare into their eyes. They surround Matt’s messy office, invisible judgment beaming from the walls. His current relatives, including an imposing father-in-law Scott (Robert Forster) refuses to accept his daughter’s infidelity. Proud and unwavering, he unleashes his unrelenting attitude with a punch to insensitive Sid’s nose, and disregards his grandchildren’s defense of their father, who see their mother in negative light. Judy Greer makes an impressionable cameo as Brian Speer’s devoted wife, Julie, struggling with her husband’s lies. Payne parallels her and Matt as lonely victims, but differences in grief management polarize their personalities. Matt demonstrates this stronger will by accepting the outpour of insults from Scott, a self-containing defense mechanism to sanctify his dying daughter. For the first time he embraces his role as dad, and learns to reserve judgment in this time of mourning.

It is here where Payne induces the gentle push from bitterness to amnesty. A film filled with warm comedic insertions that get grounded with unconditional love, The Descendants succeeds because of its characters’ ability to mature socially and spiritually. It celebrates imperfection as a natural condition, something human and existent in our everyday struggles. If the film has any flaws they are surely covered by this sense of tender remembrance and forgiveness, values to be learned and embraced at any stage in life.

Related articles

• ‘The Descendants’: In Paradise, A Stranger To Himself (npr.org)
• The Descendants Oscar Screening Q & A – George Clooney and Alexander Payne (examiner.com)