Alexander Payne has the odd habit of turning even the bleakest stories into some of the most pleasant and loving experiences you will have at the cinema. At least, that’s how I view him. It’s been seven years since he made “Sideways,” and in that time, he’s done, well, really not that much. But now we have “The Descendants,” a film that’s so dreary—and yet poignant—that it enrages me he took so long to make it.

In his opening lines, Matt King (George Clooney) proclaims that beyond the vibrant beaches and luscious foliage that hoard people’s conceptions about Hawaii exists a bastion of pain and anguish just like anywhere else—and it’s all tearing down on him at once. His wife Elizabeth lies in the hospital comatose after a boating accident. He’s detached from his two daughters, 10 year old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17 year old Alex (Shailene Woodley), and is clueless as to how to take care of them. At the same time, Matt and his cousins are in the middle of negotiating the sale of 25,000 acres of untouched Hawaiian land, passed down to them by their ancestors.

Soon after the accident, Matt learns that Elizabeth will never come out of her coma. He tells Alex that they will have to set out and break the news to their family and friends. During the conversation, she reveals to Matt that Elizabeth was having an affair, leading him to jog to his friends Kai and Mark’s house to discover the other man’s identity. Matt learns that the man is Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), and that Elizabeth was planning on asking him for a divorce soon. Distraught by these events, Matt drags Scottie, Alex and her friend Sid (Nick Krause) across Hawaii to meet with their family and friends, and to confront Brian as well.

Matt doesn’t want to hurt Brian. Rather, he wants him to have the opportunity to say goodbye, just like everyone else. Matt’s mission is one centered around recovery. His father-in-law accuses him of wasting Elizabeth’s life, and that he has no idea how to handle his daughters. As Elizabeth’s health deteriorates, he finds that he has little time is left to rectify his relationship with his daughters, and more importantly come to terms with his wife’s transgressions and forgive her.

“The Descendants,” based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, carefully—and bravely—balances spots of humor between the moments of despair. Payne’s humor is often dark and unexpected, yet provides a relief from the characters’ misfortunes. More importantly, his skill lies in the way he crafts his characters and molds the actors’ performances. Like Paul Giamatti in “Sideways,” Clooney’s character is man in the middle of his life, struggling to find a way to steady its restlessness.

Though the film skims near melodrama on several occasions, it doesn’t collapse upon itself. What is attractive about Payne is the way the characters drive his stories. He is like a modern day Elia Kazan or Billy Wilder, men who captured the complexities of life with humor, misery, and hope. If anything, Payne’s purpose with “The Descendants” is to show that Hawaii is just like another place on earth. Because in Hawaii, with every streak of paradise comes fragments of hell spinning at its heels.