'Nebraska' A Review

Nebraska is a road trip family drama dubbed a comedy by its director Alexander Payne. It follows Woody(Bruce Dern) and his son David(Will Forte) as they travel from Billings, MT to Lincoln NE in order to collect a million dollars Woody believes he won in a publishers clearing house sweepstakes. They make a stop in Woody's hometown where most of the action takes place.

The film is quiet, patient, and subdued. It explores family, age, and a certain type of America. The performances are extremely varied. Dern puts in a layered performance as an aging alcoholic father with selective and/or impaired memory. Forte plays the everyman, a well meaning, lost, blank slate, searching for connection with his father and direction in his life. The rest of the cast success varies with good turns from Stacy Keach and Bob Odenkirk but with some rigid, jarring performances from Nebraskan locals. At points the line delivery is stilted and contrived but not enough to detract from the fluidity of the film.

Nebraska is shot in a cool black and white and depicts the landscape and the people with a haunting beauty and authenticity. Certainly not a lively film, but a film that conveys a lot of truth with enough moments of excitement, inspiration, and affirmation to balance it's overall depressive feel.

See It.