Synopsis Nebraska
After the glossy and faintly implausible Oscar-bait picture, The Descendants, director Alexander Payne has returned to a more natural and personal movie language for his new film in the Cannes competition.Nebraska is a bittersweet road movie starring Bruce Dern and Will Forte as Woody and David, an elderly father and middle-aged son taking an uncomfortable road trip together. Their story is laced with pathos, comedy and regret, recalling the classic indie cinema of Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson. It is shot, with almost Amish austerity in monochrome, which gives a wintry, end-of-the-world drear to that homely roadside Americana that Payne loves to pick out with his camera.
Nebraska may not be startlingly new, and sometimes we can see the epiphanies looming up over the distant horizon; the tone is, moreover, lighter and more lenient than in earlier pictures like Sideways. But it is always funny and smart, and what is unexpected is the cracking performance from June Squibb as Woody's cantankerous wife, Kate. Squibb, who played Jack Nicholson's wife in About Schmidt, could now be in line for a best actress award with this far juicier role, challenging Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos from Blue is the Warmest Colour. It's also a lovely first-timer script from former TV writer Bob Nelson, for whom this has probably been a long-nurtured project.
Dern's Woody, a white-haired, bad tempered old guy living in retirement in Billings, Montana, is withdrawing into a confused and melancholy state. The poor old fellow has received a junk-mail flyer appearing to promise him a lottery payout of a million dollars, on condition that he collects it in person from an office in Lincoln, Nebraska. To the exasperation and fury of his wife and grownup children, Woody is obsessed with making the journey, on foot if necessary, because his car is out of action. Everyone is increasingly aware that this kind of flight is a symptom of incipient dementia, but – to humour him, exorcise this crazy idea, and spend a little time with his dad – his son David (Forte) offers to drive him. They make a stopover in their former hometown of Hawthorne, meeting up with elderly brothers, relations and neighbours who themselves start believing in Woody's crackpot millionaire claim; as a result, some painful family secrets are exhumed.
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