In which we learn that it's not important whether you win or lose, but how much you talk about winning.
Director: Alexander Payne
Writer: Bob Nelson
Cast: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Bob Odenkirk
Runtime: 115 mins.
2013
Nebraska is more than the sum of its parts. Part of that is that I'm not partial to parts of its parts. But on whole, the whole of it takes hold of some holes at the center of the "wholesome" American experience, while offering a viewing porthole into ill-represented parts of said experience.
In other words, I like the movie more for what it goes for rather than how it goes.
Nebraska follows everyman David Grant (Will Forte), whose life is settling into a vacant sense of normalcy only interrupted by the escapades of his father, Woody (Bruce Dern). David's mother Kate (June Squibb) repeatedly calls upon him to retrieve Woody, who keeps trying to walk all the way to Nebraska from his home in Montana. He wants to go there because he has received a letter in the mail declaring him the winner of one million dollars! Of course it's a scam, but there is no convincing Woody, who is stubborn and shows early signs of dementia. Eventually David decides that the only way to lay this problem to rest is to take a road trip to Nebraska to claim the false prize. He sees it as an opportunity to spend some time with the father who was often drunk, usually vacant, and always emotionally distant. So they go, and things happen along the way.
I'm going to complain first, then explain why I love this movie anyway.
Like Alexander Payne's previous directorial effort, The Descendants, Nebraska is a movie that I like less the more I think about it with my brain (though Nebraska holds up way better). Woody and David spend most of the movie waylaid in fictional small town Hawthorne, where Woody grew up. There Woody and David meet quaint small-towner after quaint small-towner: family, friends, and strangers. For a while this smattering of local color is delightful, as it's a demographic (dull elderly folks) that we rarely see on the big screen.
Unfortunately, many of the side characters descend into cartoonish shtick. After Woody starts blabbing about the prize money he's on his way to collect, he becomes a local celebrity. Everybody wants to make small talk with the new millionaire, and many want a piece of the winnings for themselves. It is here that the movie starts to violate its premise of "normal people doing normal people things". David's cousins Bart and Cole (Tim Driscoll and Devin Ratray) are hulking, taciturn figures who are only interested in chastising David for his choice of cars. These characters work fine, until Payne (and Nelson's script) starts to play them as clowns, harping on the inadequacy of David's car until it feels like more of a bit or a gag than a character quirk. In perhaps the most tonally inconsistent moment of the movie, the two goons don ski masks and try to steal Woody's golden ticket as he and David emerge from a bar. These characters and this moment belong in a mediocre Jason Bateman comedy, not the subtle narrative that Nebraska calls for.
The same thing happens with Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach), former friend and business partner of Woody. For a while the character is only mentioned in passing, and his name becomes a stand-in for things long lost, never to be regained. Once we meet the character in Hawthorne, we soon realize the role he is meant to play--the villain. He bullies and threatens our main characters into promising him some of the imaginary winnings. His character is used as a tool to build a sense of tension that I found completely unnecessary, even antithetical to the tone of the movie. If there's any kind of movie that doesn't need a bad guy, it's an intimate black and white road trip picture about a father-and-son relationship.
The other side characters also have their moments of quiet dignity mixed with inconsistent comedic bits. One deliberately, excruciatingly long scene portrays Woody, David, and all of Woody's brothers sitting in a small room watching football on television. Occasionally some of them try to make painful attempts at conversation, none more sophisticated than, "My leg's been bothering me," or "What you driving these days?" On the one hand, the scene is hilarious, honest, and painful. On the other, it's trying way too hard.
For every contrived sequence that doesn't work, there's one that works like gangbusters. One of my favorites involves David and his brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk of Breaking Bad fame) resolving to steal Woody's old air compressor back from Ed Pegram, who apparently borrowed and never returned it. They have just left their parents in the backseat of the car and gone to rummage around in the barn when a car pulls up to the property. It's a charming scene that is not particularly original, but manages to delight thanks to great characterization and smooth execution.
All that being said, Nebraska is at its best when it leaves contrivances behind in favor of a slow, plodding, meditative pace. This happens primarily when David and Woody are alone together, talking outside of a bar or on the road. These understated moments are the heart of the movie, with David desperately trying to make meaning out of his father's life--in an effort to ameliorate the meaninglessness he feels in his own--while Woody obliquely resists these attempts.
I didn't much care for David, or for Forte's performance. The former is little more than a gee shucks, aw whiz kind of guy who tries to smooth over any sort of conflict that appears in his life, and Forte plays him serviceably. Film critic Tim Brayton suggests that he would prefer to have seen Odenkirk in the role, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Nonetheless, David is an inoffensive and, as I said, serviceable protagonist.
He is elevated by his scene partner, Bruce Dern. Dern plays Woody as an affable, half-senile curmudgeon. His glassy eyes and wild hair are endearing, even as we seek to find something--just one thing--truly redeeming about his character. That's really the point of the movie, though, and Dern gets it.
Woody's prize winnings are his holy grail. His myopic quest to retrieve them is epic in tone, and pathetic in reality. It cuts to the core of how Americans seek meaning in their lives, as it is immediately apparent that he doesn't need the money for anything in particular.
So many of my family members spend a lot of time talking about the lottery, and lottery winners. It's kind of weird. They hear on the news about a local lottery winner, how much money they won, and how their life is changing; they talk about this man or woman or family to everybody. There's a barely perceptible light in their eyes as they hit all the story beats, and the following ideas usually remain unspoken: What if I were the one to win a million dollars, what if I needed to hire accountants to help me organize my winnings, what if they were talking about me on the news? It's a uniquely American pipe dream. Our white stag.
At its best, Nebraska captures the hope of lottery players, and the melancholy of long lives and old age. It may lose its way with gimmicks and caricatures, but the somber mood prevails in the end, and makes this film profound in ways that we didn't know we were missing.
4 / 5 BLOBS
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