Review: ‘Nebraska’

It’s going to be hard to beat this one for the best film of 2014 and the year is only a month old!

Bruce Dern gives the performance of his life (and his career is none-too-shabby to start with) as the elderly Woody, a man edging toward dementia after a lifetime of alcoholism. Clinging to his own reality, he sets off from Montana for Nebraska to collect the million dollars he believes he’s won in some generic sweepstakes contest. Knowing his father all too well, his son David goes along, rather than try to talk him out of it.

And so begins what has to be one of the most beautiful road trips ever captured on screen.

On their way to Omaha, the pair visit Woody’s family in the small town he grew up in. There Woody’s windfall becomes legend within a day, and by day two people are crawling out of the woodwork to get their share. David’s pleas that his father is not a millionaire fall on deaf ears.

The characters here could have been appalling caricatures, but in the hands of Payne and screenwriter Nelson, each one is a real person with his or her own foibles and quirks. Even Woody’s wife (whose first words in the film are a screeched ‘ You dumb cluck!’) is more than a shrill harpy bent on haranguing her husband.

Desperate to find some connection with his father, David searches for meaning in the place his father came from.  Woody has little time and even less fondness for the past and refuses to indulge his son.  Some of the film’s funniest moments come from the understated combat between father and son.

Shot beautifully in the most luminous black and white you’ve ever seen (honestly, I would never have believed a sunrise in black and white could be so gorgeous), the film is slow but perfectly paced. The sweepstakes office is the destination, but for each man the goal is something else entirely.

Perfectly acted, poignant and funny, picturesque and touching, Nebraska is already in my personal top 10 of 2014.

9.75/10

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