If there’s a common thread underlying Ad Hominem Enterprises’ first three features, it’s the narrative of ordinary people reacting to disruption in their everyday lives. In The Descendants, opening locally Nov. 18, this idea takes shape in Matt King (George Clooney), a father of two forced to come to terms with his wife’s indiscretion following a boating accident that’s left her in a coma. As the premise suggests, King’s odyssey is one of somber reflection; but despite the pervasiveness of disheartening familial drama, producer Jim Burke, a Minnesota native, insists that this film is not a downer.
The A.V. Club sat down with Burke before a screening of the new film at the Walker Art Center to talk about the film’s Hawaiian foundation, issues of responsibility, and director Alexander Payne’s suffusion of lighthearted moments through life’s most dismal events.
The A.V. Club: Could you talk a little bit about the importance of setting in The Descendants?
Jim Burke: I think [setting] is really important, because it puts you into a world, because it roots you there. Not just what it looks like, but what it sounds like. We went to extremes. There’s little gecko sounds that you don’t notice, but they’re in there. We try to make it as authentic as possible, almost like a documentary.
Oftentimes you see films that are shot there, and Hawaii is a substitute for some other place, like the Caribbean or the jungles of Southeast Asia, or Jurassic Park. Or sometimes you see it as some resort hotel, and it is, too, but that’s the version of Hawaii that it is to a tourist, like you or me. We wanted to make a movie that depicted what it would be like if you lived there.
AVC: To that effect, how many locals and non-professional actors did you have in the film?
JB: I don’t really have a head-count for you, but quite a few. The man that played the doctor, the woman that played the dorm mother, the hotel clerk… These are all—they do that for real, and they just did it for the movie.
AVC: At the post-screening Q&A, you mentioned the title of the film in relation to this idea of being a “link in the chain.”
JB: To me, that’s one of the main themes of the film—Matt King’s acceptance that he is a link in the chain, and that he has to take responsibility for being a father, which he had sort of become disengaged with through the course of his marriage. And part of that, for me, is that—here he’s this guy born into some version of privilege; he has a trust that he’s responsible for, and my experience with knowing a number of people like that in my life that have had that—it’s a great thing to have, but oftentimes there’s this sort of hidden shame or guilt they carry with it. They have what I consider to be, maybe, survivor’s guilt. So Matt is sort of wrestling with that, while at the same time wrestling with the circumstances of his real life—his responsibility to not be the link in the chain that breaks this thing for his family, for the next generation, his daughters, who he now feels a closer connection with.