If "Saving Mr. Banks" let us hope to experience redemption and reconciliation with a spoonful of sugar or by flying a kite, "Nebraska" assumes a darker but more realistic tone. Shot in black and white and without a musical score, the principal characters of "Nebraska," father and son Woody and David Grant, travel from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, on dad's futile quest to claim his imagined million dollar prize from a magazine subscription firm. Bruce Dern appears not even to be acting as he portrays a 70+ year old alcoholic Woody who is beginning to show signs of dementia. Will Forte (of SNL fame) plays his wonderfully kind son David who, even though he grew up as a child of an alcoholic father, is deeply concerned to bless that father's dreams of yet being a winner in life.
Where did director Alexander Payne get the folks who played Woody's aging siblings and oafish nephews? Woody and David stop in Hawthorne, Nebraska, Woody's home for many years, until alcohol and failure drove him to Montana, where they spend what seems to be an interminable weekend with Woody's aging but conniving siblings and David's two stupefying cousins. Whoever these actors are, they are pitch perfect when it comes to playing their roles. "Porchers" who are forever going on about the wonders of close-knit, small town life need to see this movie if only to see how cloying and avaricious human beings can be whether urban, suburban, or small town Nebraskan.
My suggestions of the realism of "Nebraska" shouldn't be taken to imply that the film is nothing but an unremitting screed against the harshness of life. At all stops along the way, Woody and David experience occasional acts of human kindness, and David comes to understand the lifetime of shortcomings and failures that made Woody less than an ideal father. Kate, as Woody's long-suffering, co-dependent, and downright shrewish wife may be a bit over the top but but mixes glimpses of grace with the reality that growing old with memories of a host of disappointments isn't easy.
The final sequences in which Woody confesses his desire near the end of his life to bless his sons, and David selfless actions to give his father the moment of glory for which he had long hoped, bring a fitting closure to what had hovered between despair and humor. Thus, like "Saving Mr. Banks" with respect to redemption and reconciliation, "Nebraska" leads us to the precipice of glory even though it ultimately can't deliver on what it pictures. But what "Nebraska" does deliver--a sense of the longing that should character Advent-- is more than enough.
Where did director Alexander Payne get the folks who played Woody's aging siblings and oafish nephews? Woody and David stop in Hawthorne, Nebraska, Woody's home for many years, until alcohol and failure drove him to Montana, where they spend what seems to be an interminable weekend with Woody's aging but conniving siblings and David's two stupefying cousins. Whoever these actors are, they are pitch perfect when it comes to playing their roles. "Porchers" who are forever going on about the wonders of close-knit, small town life need to see this movie if only to see how cloying and avaricious human beings can be whether urban, suburban, or small town Nebraskan.
My suggestions of the realism of "Nebraska" shouldn't be taken to imply that the film is nothing but an unremitting screed against the harshness of life. At all stops along the way, Woody and David experience occasional acts of human kindness, and David comes to understand the lifetime of shortcomings and failures that made Woody less than an ideal father. Kate, as Woody's long-suffering, co-dependent, and downright shrewish wife may be a bit over the top but but mixes glimpses of grace with the reality that growing old with memories of a host of disappointments isn't easy.
The final sequences in which Woody confesses his desire near the end of his life to bless his sons, and David selfless actions to give his father the moment of glory for which he had long hoped, bring a fitting closure to what had hovered between despair and humor. Thus, like "Saving Mr. Banks" with respect to redemption and reconciliation, "Nebraska" leads us to the precipice of glory even though it ultimately can't deliver on what it pictures. But what "Nebraska" does deliver--a sense of the longing that should character Advent-- is more than enough.
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