Archipelago

Welcome 2014!

Anyway, I'm rewatching a movie called The Descendants. It's a movie about a father trying to handle his family situation dealing with the recent tragedy of his wife being in a coma following a boating accident, all the while dealing with two daughters he is not very close with. To further complicate things, he finds out his wife will not recover and in addition she was having an affair before the accident. All-in-all, it's a pretty good commentary on family and life. George Clooney plays the father and does it all, and his children do a good job of portraying the realistic difficulties of family life. All this, shot in the rarely-used backdrop of the Hawaiian islands.

There are two things that stand out to me in this movie. The first is the examination of family. Early on, Clooney's character describes his family, "A family seems exactly like an archipelago. All part of the same whole, but still separate and alone and always drifting slowly apart." I think this quote is very reflective of the culture we live in. Media dominates all of our lives and with the growth of cell phones, personal screens becoming escape routes from dealing with real life situation. I think there is a growing longing to return to older times, times not filled with images and flashing lights but defined by conversation, relationships, and community. Throughout the movie, the family first shows this separation very well and then slowly brings them together in the necessary community of family. And I think it is necessary, which brings me to the second thing that stood out to me. In an emotional scene with his wife after finding out both that she will die and that she was unfaithful, Clooney's character states, "Isn't the idea of marriage to make your partner's way in life a little easier? For me it was always harder with you." In a lot of the recent weddings I've attended (mostly very Christian), there has been multiple instances of "maintaining your marriage as the primary relationship in your home." I think this is very much a necessary statement to make. This has obviously been a difficulty since the Garden of Eden, but it is such a prevalent issue in modern times. Most often couples focus their attention and affections on the children, or on work, or on home life. It's no wonder divorces are so prevalent these days. Marriage has become so outside focused that often couples grow distant from each other. In The Descendants, Clooney's character focuses on his law practice more than on cultivating his marriage or raising his daughters. Not to say that it's not his wife's fault for her adultery, 'cause she made the choice, but the husband is never blameless in marital infidelity.

At this point, I want to return my focus to the movie and so I will end here.