Runtime: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Alexander Payne
Quick Impressions:
Tonight I was lucky enough to catch a pre-release screening of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska at the Alamo Drafthouse as part of the just launched New York Film Critics Series. After the film, we saw a live simulcast Q&A session with stars Bruce Dern, Will Forte, and June Squibb, hosted by Rolling Stone’s film critic Peter Travers.
When I accidentally stumbled across this event online a couple of weeks ago, I could barely contain my ridiculously gleeful excitement. How cool that they do this! I thought. How have I never heard about this series before? (I got that answer tonight at the theater. Tonight was the first time they’ve ever done it.)
I must say, I was hugely excited to see a film that doesn’t officially open until next Friday, November 15. During the Q&A, we were encouraged to text in questions on Twitter, but I was too busy scribbling down answers on damp napkins and Alamo Drafthouse Order Cards. (Hopefully that’s an acceptable use for them. I did scribble all over four, but they get my business pretty much every week, and next time I promise to prepare better and bring my own paper!)
(Honestly, I took too many notes. I mean, was it necessary, really, to write before the movie started, “Host Peter Travers, Rolling Stone Critic”? What kind of a ridiculous note is that? It’s not like that’s an obscure piece of knowledge. At least I didn’t follow up with “Star Bruce Dern, actor.” I’m also pretty sure that one of my final notes—that my mother and June Squibb share the same birthday, tomorrow, November 6th!!!—was both irrelevant and easy to remember without a note. But you have to keep in mind that I was really, really, really excited. I mean, I don’t have a press pass or anything, so I never get to review movies before their official release date.)
(On a slightly related note, Peter Travers said near the end of the Q&A that he’d gotten lots of texts from people who shared June Squibb’s birthday asking for their birthdays to be acknowledged. I find that a little disturbing and hope they don’t discontinue the series because of lack of good questions.)
The Good:
Before I start, I should probably disclose that I usually love Alexander Payne’s movies.
Like me, Alexander Payne was born in Nebraska. Most of my mother’s family still lives in Omaha, so Election really appealed to me (for that reason and because it’s just such a brilliant take on high school). Paris, je t’aime was my favorite movie that year, and Payne’s segment (the one with Margo Martindale) concludes it beautifully. I also loved The Descendants which has one of the most powerful and perfect final scenes I’ve seen in any film.
(The one Payne film I didn’t love was Sideways, but I think I was just in the wrong stage of life to appreciate it. Back then, I wasn’t too interested in wine or middle age. I should probably give it another try. I did like Thomas Hayden Church’s performance. Somehow on the drive to the theater tonight, my recollection of Church’s Oscar nominated supporting performance turned into a lament about how other Wings alums fared less well in the early 2000s, like the very talented Steven Weber whose train wreck of a show—which began as Cursed but seemed to acquire a new name, plot, and cast every other week—I kept watching until its cancellation because I couldn’t help wondering how the network would sabotage it next.)
Anyway, I like to know as little as possible about a film before watching it the first time, so going in tonight, I knew only that Payne directed Nebraska, that Bruce Dern won Best Actor at Cannes, and that he and June Squibb have been getting lots of Oscar buzz. Oh, and I knew Will Forte was in it playing Dern’s son, and that the movie was shot in black and white.
I love black and white, and I hate the fact that so many children and teens see it as technologically backward or boring. (To be fair, quite a few adults see it that way, too.) I have many fond childhood memories of loading black and white film into the 35mm camera my Grandpa gave me and creeping around my house taking shots of knick-knacks, furniture, and unsuspecting residents and visitors from strange angles I found arresting. So for me, a well framed black and white shot stirs an almost primal excitement, and there thousands of them in this movie.
My husband noted afterward that he thought color would have distracted from the power of the landscape and the story, an interesting way of looking at it.
I think black and white is just the better choice for capturing the vast, stark beauty of the northern plains. Because my mom’s family is from Omaha, and I live in Texas, I’ve driven to Nebraska quite a lot, and outside of Omaha, most of Nebraska looks pretty stark. We would often drive up through rural Iowa (stopping to have a piece of pie or admire family graves in the town where my Grandpa grew up before moving to Omaha), and I must tell you, in rural Iowa and rural Nebraska, you see lots and lots and lots of fields (of corn, grass, other crops). The landscape is very flat and incredibly stark, especially in winter. (The frequent hawks add a lot of dynamic flourish, but they always fly away too quickly to be photographed from a moving car. Even if you throw yourself part way out the window. Or all of the way out the window. Trust me.)
Honestly, I think Nebraska features the most stirring, powerful, meaningful photography and cinematography I’ve seen all year, and I’ve seen Gravity. (Maybe Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography has a slight edge for me because I’ve never actually been to outer space.)
I also loved Mark Orton’s score, particularly the main theme that plays frequently but seems to become more elaborate over time. All year long, I’ve been marveling about how few working film composers there seem to be compared to the diversity of working actors and directors. (I mean, Hans Zimmer alone has scored about five million movies in the past couple of years!) I’m not complaining (necessarily) about hearing famous composers’ work again and again, but I was intrigued when I learned that Mark Orton wrote the score because I know almost nothing about him. (He seems to score a lot of documentaries.) I really like the score (really all the music) in this movie.
Nebraska also features strong writing by Bob Nelson, and even stronger performances, particularly by Bruce Dern, Will Forte, and June Squibb.
There’s also some really fine supporting work from Stacy Keach who makes Ed Pegram increasingly despicable. As played by Keach, Pegram walks a fine line between menacing and ridiculous, possibly never fully aware of how asinine his actions make him appear to others (and to the audience). It’s a really plum part for Keach, always a gifted actor who is too often relegated to relatively dull supporting roles in recent movies.
I also really liked Bob Odenkirk as Ross, the older brother of Forte’s character David, and the son of Dern’s Woody and Squibb’s Kate. (It helped that the character went in a direction that pleased me. I had my fingers crossed the whole time hoping that we weren’t going to get any ridiculous, contrived, unnecessary conflict between the brothers.) I spent over half the movie racking my brains trying to place Odenkirk before finally realizing that I recognized him from How I Met Your Mother. He’s certainly known from more than that, though. He’s very good here, so is Angela McEwan as Woody’s old flame Peg.
All of the performances feel very natural, relaxed, effortless, real. (In the Q&A, June Squibb revealed that some of the extended family members were actually area farmers, though Bruce Dern then pointed out that the first of Woody’s brothers that we meet is played by Ron Howard’s father, Rance Howard.) (At first my husband and I were confused. Was the brother literally Ron Howard’s father, or did he just act like somebody from Mayberry or Happy Days? The answer is, yes, he’s literally Ron Howard’s actual real life father.)
Best Scene Visually:
As I’ve said, I love the way this movie looks. It’s not just that I’m a sucker for cool looking black-and-white vistas. It’s more than that. In Nebraska, the cinematography tells the story—or at least presents a pervasive theme—as clearly as any of the spoken plot development.
Throughout the film, I loved the pointed contrast between the bleak, stark, almost despairing grandeur of the vast outdoor vistas and the homey, knick-knack laden, kitschy, idiosyncratic warmth of the insides of people’s houses. Outside everything is rough-hewn and angular and bleak. Inside, we see cluttered little shelves laden with knick-knacks, Coke bottles, old tin signs, memorabilia, frilly handmade wall hangings and furniture covers. The inside of every home is completely different and yet oddly similar.
This very noticeable and highly curious trend comes together and pays off beautifully in the scene when the Grant family (Woody, Kate, and their two adult sons) revisit the farmhouse where Woody spent his (potentially quite sad) childhood.
Without the people there living in it, the house is as stark, angular, bleak, and grand as any of the outdoor vistas. I love the way this all comes together and plays out. If this film isn’t at least a nominee for Best Cinematography, it will be an outright crime.
(There are so many phenomenal shots. The opening and the closing shots pair so well. And even mundane shots of people talking are framed and lit so exquisitely. The movie also gives us abundant visual metaphors—the idea that most of the men on Mount Rushmore aren’t finished yet, for instance.)
Best Scene:
It’s close—very close—but I think I have to go with the moment I just mentioned when the Grants enter that house.
Best Action Sequence:
Still, probably my favorite part of the entire movie comes just a bit later when some confused discussion about a stolen compressor and a farmhouse leads to some very misguided exploits, resulting in extremely diverting hijinks involving all four principal members of the Grant family. This scene is extra hilarious because of the way it imperfectly echoes an earlier moment Forte and Dern share on the railroad tracks looking for something. It’s also terrific because it shows the evolving, functional dynamic of what (we notice increasingly) is actually a very loving (if imperfect) family.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (June Squibb):
Another scene I love is the almost zany moment in the cemetery. June Squibb steals this scene so completely that you find yourself reflecting both, “No wonder she’s getting Oscar buzz,” and, “No wonder this poor man drinks.”
This fantastic scene of the family visiting graves reminded me terribly of an oft-heard argument between my grandma and grandpa that ran something roughly like this.
Grandma: Dammit!
Grandpa: Don’t say words like that in front of your grandchildren.
Grandma: They know worse words than that. When you were their age, you had heard plenty worse than that!
Grandpa: But I didn’t hear it from my grandmother!
Grandma: Now listen! I learned how to swear from your mother!
In some ways, June Squibb’s character reminded me a bit of my grandmother. (In other ways, Kate is both more horrible and much stronger.)
In the Q&A, Squibb shared that she grew up in Illinois around friends and relatives closely resembling Kate. She said when she first read the script, she thought, “Boy do I know who this woman is!”
I think she got the (pretty complicated) character exactly right and deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Bruce Dern and Will Forte are also superb (though largely silent) in this scene.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Alexander Payne):
Nobody has to tell us that Alexander Payne’s an amazing director who knows how to coax good performances from his cast. We can see the results on screen. But tonight after the movie, during the Q&A, Payne’s cast kept praising him again and again, nevertheless.
Bruce Dern called working with him “magnificent” and quoted Payne as saying, “Don’t show us anything. Let us find it.” Dern added that because of this sense of trust in the director and production team, “You stop performing. You’re a real human being.”
Best Director is so competitive and unfair. (I mean, why are there still only five slots for Director when there can now be up to ten Best Picture nominees? What kind of Best Picture is thrown together by an undeserving director?) Still, I really hope Payne gets nominated.
The highest compliment I can pay him is that all the parts of his film are working together in such perfect harmony that everything feels real, unpretentious, even unrehearsed. The one element that seems a bit larger than life is the repeated use of dramatic, black-and-white landscapes. But I think that works in the movie’s favor. Payne finds the perfect energy in the human cast and in the landscape. He lets the people and places of Nebraska speak for themselves, then carefully directs our gaze and attention so that we can share in his understanding of their power.
There’s not a bad performance or a bad shot (visually) in this movie, and there’s no bit of dialogue that feels pointedly superfluous or cringe worthy. The film is a success on every level, and Payne deserves credit for that. There’s no one moment in this film that proves he’s an Oscar caliber director. It’s all the moments taken collectively that make the strongest case. (Just add them all together, and you don’t have to subtract anything.)
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Bruce Dern):
I was all set to give the Oscar to Tom Hanks until I saw Nebraska. Tonight during the Q&A, Dern declared, apparently sincerely, “Getting the role of Woody in this movie is the best honor I’ve ever had,” but I think we should give him the Oscar, too.
(Listen to me—we! That’s a good one! I have absolutely no say in how the Academy dispenses its awards. But Academy members out there, you have got to see Nebraska.)
I get very enthusiastic about fantastic performances in great movies, so usually by the end of awards season, I wind up convinced that all five of the men nominated for Best Actor (plus two or three others) definitely deserve to win. I’m sure that will happen this year, too, but I still can’t say enough good things about Bruce Dern’s performance in this movie.
In the Q&A Dern’s answers show a real understanding of and appreciation for his character. “Thank God,” he said of Woody Grant, “he dares to dream. Don’t quit on your dreams because they’re yours and g*ddammit, you can pull them off if you work hard enough.”
Other gems from Dern? “Thomas Wolfe once said, ‘You can never go home again.’ Well, you must go home again and see who you are, where you come from.” Also, “If you have folks like this in your house, make sure to hug ’em before it’s too late.”
Asked what he learned from being in Nebraska, Dern replied, “I admire the monumental courage of people staying and working on land that their [ancestors] came to 150 years ago, homesteaded, and now they’re tenant farmers on their own land…But they stay. I think they’re magnificent folks.” (I hope I got that right. Keep in mind that I was furiously scribbling it on a damp napkin.)
So Dern understands not only the character of Woody, but the entire state of Nebraska, as well. No wonder Payne both has and inspires such trust in Dern. Who wouldn’t trust such a thoughtful and well spoken lead actor? (Of course, Dern also said, “I would have ripped [Payne’s] heart out if he hadn’t given me the part” and “You keep your fingers crossed” that someone “will say, ‘He doesn’t have to be a prick. He can be a Woody.’)
Dern’s performance gets better as it goes. I really liked him in the cemetery scene and in the old house, but I think I possibly liked him best when he reclaims his letter in the bar. He and Forte also play their talk with Stacy Keach in which he mentions a “half-breed” really (almost painfully) well.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Will Forte):
Will Forte was so modest and unassuming (practically self-effacing) in the Q&A after the film. When asked about future projects and if he plans to launch a rebranded career as a dramatic actor, he kept demurring with responses like, “This was not a planned movie. It just came out of nowhere. It’s all gravy after this. I already got to do my dream job at SNL. I wouldn’t even put this on a dream wish list.”
(His delivery made it clear that he never in his wildest dreams expected to appear in a film of this caliber directed by Payne, whom he earlier cited as his favorite director.)
But Forte is being too modest. (Either that, or he really thinks nothing more will come of this foray into dramatic roles, in which case, he’s crazy.)
I have a message for you, Will Forte. You were born for dramatic roles. After watching you on SNL all those years, I’ve developed a certain fondness for you, but I’ve got to tell you, though you’re a talented comedian, I like you better in Nebraska than I’ve ever liked you in anything. Ever. Please do more dramatic roles. You’re a very good actor, and your co-stars seem to think you’re a sweet, kind, lovely person who is easy to work with.
With his reputation as a fairly well known comedian firmly in place (Peter Travers kept mentioning McGruber), Forte could turn in a merely adequate performance here and impress people. But he does much, much better than that. His work in Nebraska is nuanced and sensitive and pretty much pitch perfect.
So much of Forte’s performance is about reacting. He spends most of the movie sitting (or standing) back and taking in everything that’s happening around him as he tries to figure out his relationship with his father. (Peter Travers said that he’s asking himself if he wants to become his father. My husband noted, “I also thought he was realizing that he doesn’t really know his father.” I agree with both of them and would add that by rediscovering his father as a person, he learns more about himself as a man. Also by going back to his father’s past, he understands more about his own place in the world, where he really comes from, what that means, and what kind of man he actually wants to be.) Forte’s face tells us so much even when he doesn’t have any lines.
So many successful comedians spend years trying to break into drama, and people still refuse to take them seriously. (Remember when Jim Carrey won Best Actor in a Comedy at the Golden Globes for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? And remember how he’s never been nominated for an Academy Award ever no matter how hard he tries or how much he deserves it?) Once they see you in this movie, Will Forte, people are going to take you seriously as a dramatic actor, so please take advantage of that stroke of good fortune while you can.
Forte’s best scene is probably his final personal interaction with Stacy Keach’s character (side note, that’s also a brilliant moment for Stacy Keach), but the scene when David is sitting in the room with all his uncles and cousins just trying to figure out his place and how to react really resonated with me.
Because Supporting Actor is always so competitive, Forte probably won’t get a nomination, but he should at least be a part of the discussion. And he should definitely keep taking challenging dramatic roles like this. (Somebody, please, offer him another fantastic dramatic role like this! He’s clearly cut out for this kind of work, plus notice how cinematically appealing his face looks in all those well framed black-and-white shots. He must have been a very pretty baby indeed!)
(Incidentally, I am not implying that comedic roles are not challenging.)
The Negatives:
After the film, I heard some people sitting near us at the screening complain that the writing was not as sharp as in Sideways because Payne didn’t write the screenplay himself. I disagree. (Of course, I didn’t love Sideways.) I think there’s great focus and cohesion in the story, and that there’s also great narrative progression and character development, much of which occurs non-verbally.
Maybe the one complaint I have is that the beginnings a bit slow. As the movie opens, despite (or maybe because of) a fantastic opening shot, the world of the movie feels a little artificial. It takes a bit of time to get used to and warm to the characters. However, this is a pretty silly complaint on my part because the film is not unpardonably, painfully slow, and almost every story is slower in the beginning. (Plus, the characters can’t be developed before you take the time to develop them. I spent the entire movie enchanted.)
My only other minor gripe is that we never get any kind of resolution about the situation with David’s girlfriend, but she wasn’t very interesting, anyway, I suppose. Why should we care what happens to her?
Overall:
I loved the movie Nebraska, pretty much start to finish. Its use of black-and-white won me over early on, and every performance is phenomenal. It’s hard to imagine Dern not getting an Oscar nomination for his turn as Woody, and he might even win. In a perfect world, Alexander Payne, June Squibb, and Will Forte would get nominations, too. Nebraska also deserves Oscar recognition for score and cinematography.
To be honest, there are parts of this movie that I love that I haven’t even mentioned yet. For instance, there’s a brilliant early scene when Forte’s character asks his dad a lot of questions about marriage and children. Their exchange shows a wonderful generational disconnect. Give me time, and I can call out even more shining moments.
This movie’s official release date is November 15. When it does come to a theater near you, please go see it. Bruce Dern cordially invites everyone to “come on down.” You’ll be glad you did.