Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Nebraska - movie review


          If you escape to the movies as a respite from some of the harsher aspects of the real world, you might want to skip “Nebraska” starring Bruce Dern. It’s a bleak movie with a lot of nothing: no color (filmed entirely in black and white), flat landscape-less scenery of Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and lots of actors playing friends and relatives taking up space in living rooms or at dinner tables but saying little, stuck in their own worlds of … of what? I couldn’t even imagine. Grunts and vapid stares replaced any kind of recognizable conversation.
          At the same time, this movie is filled with a powerful story of love and hope and getting older and care giving and friendship and family. The blank openness of the film leaves much for your imagination to create the scenario of what it must have been like for the Grant family living a tough existence in Billings, Montana.
          Bruce Dern plays the patriarch, Woody Grant, who is singularly focused on getting to Lincoln, Nebraska to claim his sweepstakes prize of one million dollars from a magazine sweepstake promotional company.  His son David, played lovingly by Will Forte, tries to explain to his dad that the sweepstake is a scam and that his dad has not, in fact, won anything.  David is constantly tracking down his dad who is repeatedly escaping his home or the hospital to hit the road to Nebraska.
          I didn’t really begin to ‘get’ this movie until one hour and fifteen minutes into it when Kate Grant (June Squibb), who plays the wife of Woody, delivers a shocking and wake-up line in the film – I won’t spoil the surprise here. June Squibb’s performance is outstanding as she plays all the mid-western wives rolled into one who are fed up with vacant spouses that, on the surface, cause more grief than they appear to be worth. Ms. Squibb has played in a few movies (About Schmidt and Scent of a Woman, Meet Joe Black) and appears equally noted for her TV work in Getting On (a new HBO series) and Mike and Molly and Castle. I intend to check out her work; she’s that good.

          I’m not sure how to rate this film. On the one hand, it’s compelling and makes you think. On the other hand, all the components used to convey the bleakness (filming style, landscape, casting, story line) took a toll on my ‘enjoyment’ of the film, and perhaps that’s just the way it was supposed to be.
Three ticket stubs out of a possible five