Nebraska Review

Release Year: 2013

Director: Alexander Payne

Running time: 115 minutes

Nebraska is a movie I had been meaning to watch for a long time, and I finally got around to watching it recently, thankfully without bloated expectations. Knowing little outside the premise, I went in nearly as ignorant as possible to this movie, and from my first impressions to my last, it was at least interesting. As far as being a great movie I am glad to have seen, that is not exactly the same thing.

The film has a primary conflict right from the opening shot: an elderly man believes he won a ton of money as a prize from a magazine contest and wants to go to Nebraska to collect it. It is a simple enough premise. Shot in black-and-white at a pace just as monotone, Nebraska does not try to excite or even really impress. If other movies are wildflowers and plants that hope to be worthy of the viewer’s attention for their duration, Nebraska is a seed that sprouts for nearly two hours, promising nothing more than itself and therefore not technically disappointing. This humble presentation, that’s actually humble and not some lofty work that hopes to look deeper than it really is, saves the movie from being the least bit bad.

It ends up being the other features that prevent it from being extremely great, but I will get to that. First, it is worth congratulating the amount of realism this film possesses. It does not really have a choice but to be realistic, since it devotes itself to displaying the elderly protagonist’s relationship with his family who join or host him on his quest, and it, in my opinion, truly nails the essence of life that it attempts to capture. Woody (the protagonist) and his son have nothing but genuine-sounding conversations, and every interaction between each family member, from mundane discussion of body aches to emotional breakthroughs, never felt forced or far-fetched.

The decision to shoot it in black and white was a terrific one, as colorized scenes would probably feel a little lifeless and the mundane, minute scale of the subject matter would not fill the cinematography out. The movie’s static ambition, however, does not make it automatically enjoyable just because it is authentic. Just as a question can be authentic, but still unsatisfying if there is no answer or hope for an answer, so this movie portrays a dysfunctional family without any clues of how the viewer must interpret them. This is respectable, but the movie results in a consequential emptiness. I do not mean the movie provides some intentional emptiness as a philosophical or social statement (such as with the movies Seven or The Departed), I mean the movie is empty itself, with sparseness as its input rather than output.

The emptiness manifests in how it is pitifully obvious that the magazine has lured Woody into a scam, and the presentation of his family is almost as disappointing. His sons are in fact willing to care about him (though to different extents) but everyone else seems to care only for his money. His family is dysfunctional, as mentioned, but there is nothing the viewer is explicitly or even implicitly supposed to do with that.

Such a bare-bones principle makes this movie a real challenge. This is what I like most about it. Watching Woody’s nephews talk about how fast they could drive… over, and over again… as well as seeing family members’ true selves when things were looking either up or down, really gave me an appreciation. It gave me an appreciation for my own family and for the fact that life is so variant that we even have a word to classify what is “boring.” Life has so much tension and suffering (not to be corny) and to be reminded that a.) you have a choice whether or not to embrace those little moments when life is eased, b.) other people go though struggles just like your own, and yet not exactly like your own, and c.) I have the choice whether to seek reconciliation with others… such reminders are significant.

Yes, Nebraska is boring and intentionally so, but it is also sublimely acted and as funny as it is gritty. The movie is just empty enough that it doesn’t satisfy like another good film would, but the emptiness is a well-done catalyst for the viewer’s own takeaways.