Nebraska (2013): Bleakville, USA

Director Alexander Payne and his screenwriter Bob Nelson, undoubtedly put a lot of thought, effort and time into the project that became the film, Nebraska. It’s not clear what they wanted to say, though. Certainly, Nebraska paints a bleak view of the USA, or at least of the American Heartland and its people. Why they see us (or them) that way is far less clear.

Nebraska’s grim view of middle America is of a dead zone, populated by lost souls, a melancholy place of dying farm towns with no vitality, peeling paint, desolate buildings, and emptiness.  The landscape is vast, but dreary, treeless.  What might be grand vistas of the great plains are turned, by the grainy, slightly washed out black and white cinematography, into shades of a drab gray wasteland. Some have called the landscape photography understated, poetic and even “starkly beautiful”, but I disagree.  

Billings Montana, where the movie starts, is illustrated primarily by a long, dirty highway, where tractor-trailers rumble noisily by empty buildings and the occasional, unattractive strip mall. It’s here that we meet Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), trudging along the shoulder, stooped, bowlegged, limping a little, long white hair flapping in the wind. Woody is intent on walking to Lincoln, Nebraska – some seven hundred miles distant – to pick up what he thinks is a $1 million prize from a magazine sweepstakes. Woody lives with his shrewish, verbally abusive wife, Kate (June Squibb), in a kind of dreary, working class neighborhood of small, closely packed clapboard houses, The interior is a bit shabby.  We learn that Woody, in his 80’s, is a retired, sometime alcoholic, and, once upon a time, kind of a scoundrel. Apparently, he wasn’t much of a father to his two, now grown sons, either. He says little, and does less. But he is stubbornly intent on getting his alleged prize money – that’s all he cares about now.

His younger son, David (Will Forte), a salesman in a dull home stereo store, lives in a plain, little apartment in town, but apparently hangs around the old family home a lot, having little else to do. He’s frustrated by the lunacy of his old man’s delusion, but also by his mother’s bitchiness, and so decides to drive Dad to Lincoln, in order  to escape for a few days, spend a little time with the old man, and put an end to the sweepstakes talk once and for all. And so, Nebraska veers into road movie territory. 

But only a little bit. There’s a symbolic stop at Mt Rushmore (Woody is not impressed), and a couple of pit-stops, where Woody/Dern gets to demonstrate his silent inscrutable qualities, and David/Forte gets to practice his sensitive, concerned, tongue-tied  persona.  Pretty soon the pair arrive in Hawthorne,  Nebraska, Woody’s (fictional) home town, for a visit with his aged brother, cousins, nephews, old cronies, et al. 

Hawthorne comes across as a dead agrarian outpost. Buildings are run down, mostly empty, it seems,  and decrepit. I half-expected to see some old tumbleweed drifting eerily down Main Street. Interiors are dingy, cluttered, suffocating. The relatives and other inhabitants are mostly zombie-like old folks, and young, fat cretins. They are   essentially cardboard stereotypes; mostly condescending sketches of people, not believable characters. These character sketches are occasionally funny. The humor comes in a Dianne Arbus grotesque meets Steven Wright gloomy/ironic way.

There are no physically attractive people in this town, nor for that matter, in this movie. None. The closest thing to an attractive personality is Will Forte’s character, but this impression is more a matter of contrast than substance.

Is this about America? Is it Payne’s commentary on the American Dream? If so, Payne seems to be saying that there’s no there here.  And no future. That whatever strength, resiliency, and character Americans once possessed has evaporated; replaced by credulity, stupidity and greed; and that the most we can hope for is occasional human kindness. As I said, bleak.

Much has been made of the acting in Nebraska. Bruce Dern is nominated for an Academy Award as best actor, and June Squibb is nominated as best supporting actress. Again I have to disagree.  Dern’s okay, but his character is so wooden, with so little affect or emotion, so few words, and so little action, that it’s a one-note performance. I don’t blame him – that’s the role, but it does not qualify as a great achievement.  Squibb’s character, the bitchy wife, is potentially interesting, and though she’s a very negative personality, she gets off some pretty funny lines. But I’d sooner credit the screenwriter, than the actress. Watching Squibb, I always saw the acting. She said her lines, but I never felt she was a real character I could believe in. Will Forte, as David Grant, was the everyman of this picture, the stand-in for us. His David understood the absurdity of the situation he was in and the imbecility of many of the other characters, and he ably conveyed sincerity and concern for his dad, Woody. His was the closest to a human performance, but he was constrained by the understatement of the script, and thus David was mostly a passive observer throughout the movie.

What Nebraska does have going for it is a perspective, a feel, a pace and a look that pervades every scene, and fulfills the quirkily depressing intentions of the director. As I’ve said, it has a point of view, but in the absence of a compelling story, believable characters, or an honest depiction of the world it inhabits, the point is not convincing.

Nebraska is definitely not my cup of tea. For reasons I cannot fathom, a number of people, including many respected film critics, actually like this movie. It is nominated for the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars.

Don’t bet on it.

In wide release.