Nebraska (****)

Alexander Payne’s first two films were about young women, but since then he’s become a great chronicler of the difficult man. Probably Will Forte’s character, a mild-mannered stereo saleman, is the lead role here, but Bruce Dern’s grumpy old man dominates the story. And he’s so difficult that it becomes easier for his son to drive him from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, than to convince him that he hasn’t really won a million-dollar prize like the piece of paper says. (Think Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.) He’ll walk to Lincoln to claim his prize if necessary. If this sounds like a road movie, or a comedy, it is both, but it’s a lot more too.

If you are lucky, and paying attention, there will come a point in which you recognize your parents as autonomous individuals who had lives before you came along. This recognition is at the heart of the movie. Your parents may be nothing like the ones in this film, your life nothing like that of the son, and your home far from the Midwest, but there is a kind of universality in this story that is only set in relief by the non-universal, peculiar details.

 

As noted, Dern dominates the film, with the showy role of an ornery, bickery alcoholic, but equally good is June Squibb as his long-suffering wife, though she’s apt to strike most viewers as mean-spirited. Neither of them is especially likeable, but as the film goes on they become understandable, and Payne, collaborating with screenwriter Bob Nelson, elicits a compassion in the viewer. It’s a cliché to say that an old person feels the same inside, but you don’t see it often depicted on screen. For example, so often when you hear an old person talk about sex it’s supposed to be cute, but when Squibb’s character starts talking about the men who once fought over her, it’s not cute — though it’s funny — because you hear the way that experience remains with her.

Another of Payne’s trademarks is to set his films in places usually ignored on screen and to makes those places — the Hawaii of The Descendents, the California wine country of Sideways, key to the story. Nebraska most resembles About Schmidt, which also takes place, in part, in Payne’s native state, though the pace is a notch tighter.  An important part of the story takes place in a small town, and both because of the plot and because this town hasn’t changed much, the movie deeply evokes a forgotten past. It is a reminder that, whether we know about it or not, each of us is influenced by the people and places that have gone before us.

 

IMDb link

 

viewed 12/10/13 at 7:00 pm at Ritz 5; posted 1/9/14