NEBRASKA

All over the world, men and women connect for all manner of reasons. Some are brought together out of physical attraction, some out of spiritual connection, some out of a deep-seeded friendship. They spend months and years building a relationship with one another, relationships that will define them both as individuals and couples. Some time later, these men and women bring us – their children – into the world. Just like that, everything they built is upended…usually permanently.

Sort of a lousy thing to do to our parents, don’t you think?

Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) has won one million dollars. Well, he thinks he has anyway.

What has in fact happened is that he’s been mailed one of those Publisher’s-Clearinghouse-type letters that says he is entitled to a big cash prize if his number is selected and he can get to Lincoln, Nebraska with his claim letter by a certain date to collect his cheque. It’s one of the oldest scams in the book, but Woody doesn’t think so. He thinks that million dollars is all-but-his, and he’s hellbent on getting to Nebraska to get it. So much so that he decides to walk there.

From Montana.

In the face of this, he’s at-first held back by his wife Kate (June Squibb) and son David (Will Forte). They try to explain to Woody that he’s going a long way for nothing, but he’s having none of it. He wants that million dollars before his chance runs out. He needs it, he says, so he can buy a new truck (which he can’t drive), and a compressor (which he won’t use). Seeing how determined his father is, David caves and offers to drive him, much to Kate’s chagrin.

Once in Nebraska, things go sideways in a hurry. For starters, Woody takes a nasty fall which gets Kate worried enough to hop a bus and catch up with the boys. As if that’s not enough, word of Woody’s “winnings” begins to spread, and suddenly he’s something of a celebrity in his old hometown of Hawthorne. It’s not bad enough that he’s going to collect a prize that likely doesn’t exist. Now every long-lost friend wants a piece.

As time passes for both us and our parents, we think we get a firm grip on who they are and what they do. We watch them intently as children, when their characteristics impress themselves upon us both for better and for worse. We gather what we can, and likely misunderstand so very much without realizing it. We notice things they don’t think we notice and piece it together to form a very unique opinion of these men and women.

The thing is, often times we don’t know our mothers and fathers half as well as we think we do.

We seldom get a complete picture of who they were when they were before we came along to turn their lives upside down. We hear stories of course, look at pictures, perhaps watch a video or two. These details get brought together like a book that has pages missing. There are moments of shame that seldom get brought to light…moments of weakness…moments of doubt. They are the sorts of moments that every human being lives through, but not the sort of moment they want to relive. Likewise, there are subtle joys that might have shone when they were young, but have certainly dimmed as time has dimmed some of their spark. These talents, charms, accomplishments, and feats were once what brought our parents together. Somehow though, these facets are dulled through the years.

With that in mind, many of us might eventually find ourselves in David’s shoes; coming across those missing pages and putting them back into the book. A family member tells us about an argument between our mothers and fathers, and what caused it. Perhaps its an incident we never knew about before, or perhaps we knew about it but had our facts wrong. What happens then? How are we supposed to react when a truth we believed in for years is suddenly proven untrue? What if it affected the way we acted as children, or worse, the way we act as adults?

These sorts of questions are at the core of NEBRASKA and what makes it so unexpectedly wonderful. As it begins, it seems to be so straightforward, with David being the dutiful son, Kate playing the incredulous wife, and Woody the stubborn mule. Each of them is more than that though. Each of them are proud, wistful, supportive, and most of all, loyal. David and Kate might know full-well that Woody won’t be picking up a million dollar cheque if-and-when he gets to Lincoln, but both have been through far too much with Woody to let him go through certain disappointment alone. This is a hidden blessing, since their decision to accompany Woody drops them into situations where they learn more about their family than they ever would have at home.

With that in mind, it’s fitting that NEBRASKA is in black & white, as it befits the look David gets at the past. As he moves about a place that hasn’t changed much through the years, meeting people who haven’t changed much either, he is basically walking through the photos in his family’s album. Such images could make so many faces and places look so much better than they likely are, for instance turning a dead meadow and a shabby barn into a field of dreams. However, the black & white aesthetic NEBRASKA employs isn’t out to harken nostalgia. It wants to summon feelings of documentation – to remind us of a time when photography was uncommon, with precious film only being used on the most important of details. What we’re seeing might not mean much to David as he wanders through them, but by understanding how they shaped his parents, it’s as if he’s fallen headlong into his family’s archive.

Our fathers and mothers are many people to many people. To some they are salt of the earth, fine upstanding citizens. To others they are scoundrels and bitter pills. To us they might be heroes or disappointments. Thing is, the truth is somewhere in the middle of all of that, and it’s a truth only they know for sure. It might be a truth they choose to share, it might be a truth we stumble upon, or it might be a truth that we never learn at all. The point is this, that even thought we may believe we know someone inside-and-out, it’s entirely possible that we may not know them that well at all.

Perhaps if we did, we might be better children, even if we think we were pretty good children already.

Matineescore: ★ ★ ★ ★ out of ★ ★ ★ ★

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