Nebraska (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD)

The protagonist in “Nebraska” is a wooly headed wishful thinker who has woven himself inside a cocoon of vain imaginings. We have a glimpse into the character of Woody through relationships which show him to be a person of bad temper, sub-minimal moral fiber, and of zero intellectual honesty.Persuaded by some marketing gimmick, Woody believes he has won a million dollars. Unable to convince him otherwise, Woody’s faithful son has undertaken to drive his father to collect the prize money. On the way they pass through the small town where Woody had grown up. His arrival creates a sensation when everyone hears that Woody is now — or soon will be — very rich. This belief brings out the worst in Woody’s many family members and old friends for whom the love of money is the root of all evil.The characters are deftly and sharply drawn, the acting is flawless and every scene convincing. The desolation of the landscape in black and white, along with the sparse background music, contribute to a plot that is masterfully conceived and brilliantly presented.

"Nebraska' is filmed in black and white, the choice of director, Alexander Payne. Bruce Dern stars magnificently as the irascible, contrary old man on a quest. He won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival. Jane Squibb stars brilliantly in her cranky but humorous and sharp-minded role as his wife. She was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. Alexander Payne won an Oscar for Best Director.This is about a man in his early 80s seeking a reason to go on living. Like Ulysses, like Jason, he is on a quest to seek his fortune. He is the American, mid-west questing hero. Along the way of his journey, he encounters the barriers which he must overcome to find his fortune and is finally successful. He may not even be aware that he has won something he never worked for, but he has won, and the story has a poignant and touching ending.Director Alexander Payne chose to shoot this film in black and white. This evokes a feeling of nostalgia, a yearning for things past, and the flat landscape of Northern Nebraska does not lose anything from not being in brilliant colour. The landscape may be flat, dull and repetitive but it is important, for it is here that our food is grown. It is the breadbasket of the country. The inhabitants we meet along Willy Grant's journey may seem dull, eccentric and humorous with their country ways, but these are brave people who battle climate and market prices to eke out a living while growing our food. Often laughed at, they are the unsung heroes who give us our daily bread.The movie opens with a shot of Willy Grant walking on the shoulder of a highway. He walks with bent back and quick step as if he is going to collapse under the weight of gravity, but his step is one of determination.. A police officer stops and asks him what he is doing. He lives in Billings, Montana, and he tells the officer that he is walking to Nebraska. He is taken to the police station and David (Will Forte) his younger son, is called to pick him up.No one, not even his cranky, exasperated wife played by Jane Squibb, can talk him out of going on this journey. He has lost his driving license and no one will drive him to Nebraska, so he decides to walk.The two sons discuss the situation. The older one thinks their father has Alzheimer's. The younger one does not think so. He believes that his father is seeking a purpose to go on living. During the conversation, the older son points out that their father has been a drunk who never paid attention to them whatsoever. This seems to be his excuse for not helping his father realize his quest.Drunk and neglectful father or not, the younger son, David, finally decides to drive his father to Lincoln, Nebraska, so that Willy can realize his dream. It seems that Willy received one of those pseudo magazine subscription flyers which screams in bold letters: "You have won $1,000,000." Willy doesn't read the finer print that says, "If you have the winning numbers." He assumes he has won and is on his way to Lincoln to collect the money.When the younger son David can no longer talk any sense into his father, he agrees to take Willy to Lincoln. What happens on their journey is the bulk of the story. Staying for a day in Hawthorne, Nebraska (which my Nebraska-born husband tells me is a fictional town) Willy encounters his past and picks up his old habit of drinking excessively. When old-time friends and relatives find out he has won "the lottery", well, suddenly he has tons of friends and tons of family, all with their hands out.His adventures include being robbed by his nephews, being hospitalized, from which he runs away, being humiliated in front of his former friends, being disappointed and finally, being vindicated through the exceptionally good graces of his son, David. The man who humiliates him is Ed Pegram, his former business partner, played well by actor Stacy Keach.As the son, David, hears bits and pieces of his father's past, he becomes aware that Willy's life has not always been so mundane. He was shot down in Korea; he had a former love who never quite got over him; as well, it is said that he was in love with a "half breed" (so-called by Ed Pegram) and wanted to divorce his wife. But Ed says he talked Willy out of it, since in those days, divorce was a sin. Ed notes that, over the decades, "God must have changed His mind."There are some marvelously humorous scenes with Jane Squibb as the long-suffering wife, as she visits a grave yard, and inadvertently becomes a party to a hilarious theft by her sons. She also protects her husband from some greedy relatives and gives them a comeuppance, complete with the F word, which shocks these straight-laced farmer types.In Lincoln, Woody learns the truth of the scam and gets no money. The office person asks the son if he has Alzheimer's. The son says no - that he just believes what people tell him. She replies, "That's too bad."David asks his father why he wants the money. He says - so that he can have a new pickup truck and leave something for his sons. David tells him that they don't need anything and why does he want the truck when he can't drive. Turns out he just wants it "to have."On the way back to Montana, David makes a few choices which will enrich Woody' s life and his standing in his hometown of Hawthorne. Woody leaves the town with pride, not aware that he has, indeed, won the lottery.To win the lottery is to get something one has not worked for. Woody has ignored his children and never loved his wife. He does not deserve to have such a loyal wife and he does not deserve to have his sons. He has not earned it.But he has won. He has won the lottery of marriage and parenthood. He has won the loyalty of his wife and in his son David, he has won solid gold devotion.Without putting forth any effort, Willy has won the golden fleece of life.

I’ve had this for a while. I am not sure why I bought it. I really had no clue what it was about. I am very lucky that I did though. Allow me to explain.First, let’s talk about the pace of the movie. It is very slow. Some scenes just show you land and have music playing. There is no action. It is all dialogs. That is fine. You will find just from the movements and facial expression, of the characters, that you see an entire story, just for them.Some of the funniest stuff I have ever heard, is said when the older people are just chatting back and forth. Then there is the timing of it all. It is not an easy thing, to have everything just work out and fit perfectly. With just the right amount of pause before the next words are spoken. But, ever actor in this movie does it with ease. I just laughed and laughed. I think this would be considered a black comedy.Now let us discuss the story. Well, it is firstly about a man who is rather old. He had a time when he felt very important. He had friends and knew many of the people around him. He was busy and lived the way he wished. Now, he is older. Years and years have went by. He has started to feel empty and as if there is no point. He is searching. Searching not for money or fame. He is searching for a new purpose. He just wants to feel needed again.So, he gets something saying he has won $1,000,000. All he has to do is pick it up. He starts walking. He has no drivers’ license. His son stops him and brings him home. But, the old man will not stop. He continues to walk, trying to get to his destination and receive his money.His son realizes that he will not stop and aggress to drive him there. So, they set out. Those who know they man are telling him how stupid it is and that it is fake. Including his son. Then, people start to believe it and some ask for amounts of money. The man starts to feel important again. He is getting the attention that he has not gotten for a long time. There are many things that happen. I really do not want to give anything away.You do get a sense that the man, though he may not have shown it, does care very much about people. He cares about them and wants nothing more than to help them out.This movie is really all about the journey, the journey for one man, a purpose, a reason to get up and something to look forward to. I thought of my grandfather when I watched this. It made me very happy. This is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.Another thing, remember how I said that there are parts that just show you land and play music? Well, the movie is in black and white. But, somehow, I just got a feeling that I was seeing more than I ever would if it were in color. I thought of a way to explain it. So I think. Imagine you know a man. Say you know him for 40 years. The man moves far away. Now, you’ve been talking to the man for decades and know everything about him. One day though, in your house you find a box. The box is full of books. They turn out to be diaries that the man has kept since he was a young kid. You start to read them. Though you have known, seen and interacted with the man for decades, you feel that you learn more from and about him, just from reading his journals. Though you are reading black writing, on white paper, what you read, gives you visions and thoughts that are more colorful and informative than any of the time you could ever spend with the man. You learn so much just from the mans life, written in black, on white. That is what I thought of, to explain the way this movie made me feel. So, there it is.

The problem with the American Dream is that it isn't big enough to go around. Everyone wants to hit the jackpot, win the lottery, have a slice of the pie. But few among the millions who live along its margins will do so. Life on the edges is a free-for-all where everyone hustles to get by. One or two jobs aren't even enough in some cases, the spending power of the dollar having topped out in about 1970. Since then it's been sink or swim with lots of people going under. Those portrayed in this film have already sunk, abandoned by the Dream, their country and its government. Meanwhile the thin sliver of rich at the top has never been richer, though this great social evil is not addressed by the film.One of the first things to go when a civilisation crumbles is civitas (civility). The people in this film, by and large, are not civil. They are coarse, rude, argumentative and belligerent (sometimes). They are also stupefied by beer, television, crassness and fecklessness. They have little of value to say to one another and wouldn't know how to say it if they did. These comments are not meant to ridicule them but to condemn the conditions in which they are expected to live. This is what inequality will do to any society, the American one included. It creates needless suffering and desperation of the kind we see here. As such, it is not always easy to watch. Although nominally a dark and sardonic comedy in the Coen Brothers mode of storytelling, it is also profoundly depressing. Suitably filmed in stark black and white, it takes us on a journey through the American heartland (the Midwest). Nebraska, as re-told in this modern fairy tale, is the golden pot at the end of the rainbow, a place where winners of a lottery can pick up their million dollars. Or so it seems to the gullible, or those, like Woody Grant, the elderly father in this story, who are suffering from dementia.Woody lives in Billings, Montana with his wife Kate. They have two grown sons, David and Ross. David works as a salesman in a stereo equipment store in town. Ross, the elder son, is a local TV news reader. Both sons are somewhat estranged from the family, especially from their selfish father, but David has the bigger heart of the two and is thus the more forgiving of past parental transgressions.Woody keeps walking out the front door of the house. He's like a dog that gets loose from its chain. He wanders through the town half lucidly, not really sure of why he's there or where he's going. His actual quixotic quest is to get to Lincoln, capital of Nebraska, to collect his million dollars. He thinks he'll walk there, a journey of almost a thousand miles.David gets in the car to fetch his father. Woody is at the police station, picked up by the local cops while walking along a dangerous section of the highway. This has happened before, Woody escaping and David going after him. Ross thinks Dad should just be locked away in a rest home, the polite term nowadays for penitentiaries for the elderly. But David will not allow it. Kate, the mother, seems curiously non-committal, so it's hard to gauge what she might want.Rational explanations will not work with Woody. He believes he has won the prize and will go to Nebraska to collect it. At wit's end, David finally agrees to drive him there. Thus the story becomes a buddy and road flick, father and son bonding during their long journey, one that will produce strange encounters and happenings along the way, especially with relatives of theirs and townsfolk in the town of Hawthorne, the place where Woody grew up and the family lived for a time when the boys were much younger.Word spreads among the locals that Woody has won his million. It's bogus as David keeps trying to tell them but nobody believes him. They think Woody has won the jackpot for real. This brings out the worst in them — jealousy, spite, envy, aggression. Woody owes some of them past debts and now they want to collect. David, a quiet and gentle person, gets caught in the middle more than once in trying to defend his father. Most of the film is a comedy of drunken errors, as people aren't lucid enough to know what they are saying to one another. This is the sardonic humour.But a great sadness and weariness hangs over the proceedings as the wild goose chase takes us from one ugly, decaying town to the next on the endless highway to nowhere. Bad food, seedy bars, cheap motels — you can picture it. And the people.David is a loving being. Despite everything, he is loyal to his father and treats him with dignity, even if the father is long past knowing what dignity is. They get to Lincoln and Woody learns the truth regarding his mission. On the way back to Montana he wears a baseball cap given to him by the company in Lincoln. 'Prize Winner' is what it says. Woody wears it, oblivious to the pathos and irony it announces.Because of David's love the story is redemptive in the end. "All I ever had was Redemption Song" Bob Marley once plaintively sang to us. It is this too that David sings from his heart as they drive home together, even if Woody can no longer hear the music.

In this unique brilliant film director Alexander Payne effectively captures a place and time and presents us with a simple story of an aging man’s quest to claim a $1million magazine sweepstake prize. Bruce Dern’s Woody Grant is an irascible stubborn man who drinks. He has spent his life in Midwest America and on his way to collect his money in Lincoln, Nebraska accompanied by his son David stops off to visit his older brother and his family in the small town of Hawthorne, where he grew up. In this elegiac film Payne successfully opens a window to a world of small town rural America, of extended families and quiet desperation and acceptance. Although some might consider the narrative to be rambling I think the slow deliberate pacing allows a gentle incisive exploration of Woody’s life, and despite the film’s melancholy contemplative tone there is a rich subtle dry humour which delights. The acting is universally of a high standard with many outstandingly restrained performances and the impressive cinematography and soundtrack is effortlessly understated in this powerfully affecting film.

It is clear after watching Alexander Paynes latest bittersweet tale that he is one of my favorite directors. He makes such assured pictures which are very well balanced, realistically themed, diverse and emotionally resonant. Although after some reflection Nebraska may not hit the grand heights of About Schmidt and Sideways its certainly on par with The Descendants as one of last years better movies.It follows an aging, slightly-demented father and his agreeable son on their road trip to claim the "Million Dollar Prize" that the father believes he has bagged. On the way, the son learns more about his father, along with his family and past. Nebraska is in no small part about finding the charm and transcendence in the inelegant and banal.Resembling most intimately David Lynch’s Straight Story (1999) with its benevolent narrative engine and wistful tone, Nebraska will be noted for 77-year-old Bruce Dern’s incredible return to a leading role (despite a raft of character roles, he’s best remembered as the lead in the 1972 ecologically-aware sci-fi classic Silent Running), which justifiably earned him the best actor gong at last year’s CannesThe film may give an appearance of a snooze fest but the terrific use of inventiveness keeps the plot & characters(some wonderful improv by some unknown actors and an over-bearing but hilarious turn from June Squibb) flowing for the audience all the time. There is an eclectic, poignant and stunning mid-west score too from composer Marc Orton.Considering Payne was born in Nebraska i think this is his fondest and most reminiscent work. Nebraska is really about not surrendering the joys of the past or the unfulfilled dreams one once had which is clever considering it starts out looking into the future.

'David Grant's' aging father 'Woody' believes he has won a Million Dollars,he's had a voucher in the post and wants to go to 'Lincoln, Nebraska' tocollect his winnings, even though his son try's to tell him the voucher isn't'a winning ticket''Woody' an alcoholic often wanders, son 'David' is often called away fromwork to collect his father.After some consideration, 'David' agrees to take the 1000 mile journey from'Billings, Montana' where they live to 'Lincoln' if only to prove to his fatherthat it's a wild goose chase.The trip takes them to 'Hawthorn' where 'Woody' had once lived, they haverelatives living there, also old friends of 'Woody's'The '';Home-coming' does expose the frailties of family and friendship when'Woody's' supposed good fortune becomes public knowledge.However there is 200 miles still to travel before closure can be realized onthe ''fools-errand'The trip though it exposes what greed does to so called family members andfriends thus bringing home a few truths, it is also a journey of discovery betweenfather and son.Filmed in 'black and white' it's a story of reflections, memories, a little humour,and perhaps a little heart-warming.

This would have been such an amazing film were it in vibrant colour. I think the black and white idea is a mistake. The pictures are weird in such high definition black and white and the lighting is so difficult that some shots just don't work well as moving pictures. I imagine if something like the best of the Coen Brothers cinematography had been applied here we would have had a masterpiece of the American cinema (maybe the black and white in Woody Allen's films in the 80s worked because they had been shot on film and lit the traditional way). This film has a tight, realistic and unpredictable script full of well made observations, with amazing empathy and humour and it has excellent casting including a very good performance from veteran 'baddie' Stacy Keach.