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7 December
89 = S : 14 / A : 15 / C : 15 / M : 17 / P : 13 / F : 15
A rating and review of Nebraska (2013)
S = script
A = acting
C = cinematography
M = music
P = pacing
F = feel
9 = mid-point of scale (all scored out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)
* Contains spoilers *
It may not only be true of lesser films (well, not true of The Third Man (1949)), but Bel Ami (2012) fails at attempting to pass off London as Paris, and On the Road (2012) is a film that, as this one does, features landscape - just nowhere near, reading the credits, where the various journeys were supposed to be happening.
It is an interesting choice to present this film in black and white, because it really adds almost nothing to what we see except the views of the scenery, which are faultless. With Frances Ha (2013), it worked, it did enhance the film's cinematic qualities, but here - apart from the obvious suggestion that much of life in states such as Montana and Nebraska is being presented as lacking a dimension - it was only the fleeting longer shots in transit that benefited, but, then, so much that I would not have had the film any other way.
And this is a film that says something about acceptance, though that does not mean that I have to accept this highly inaccurate account of it from IMDb :
An aging, booze-addled father makes the trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim a million dollar Mega Sweepstakes Marketing prize
I see no evidence that David Grant (also unwillingly known as Davie / Davey, and played by Will Forte) is estranged from his father Woody (short for Woodrow, and acted by Bruce Dern), and it is he, rather than his brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk), who comes for him when he has been picked up by the police at the start. The other descriptions beg the question : what life has Woody led that he is as he is, and can his wife Kate (June Squibb) exculpate herself ?
The course of the film takes us to Hawthorne, where Woody grew up, and where there were at least two women in his life. One, sympathetically and with great naturalness brought off by Angela McEwan, is Peg, whose humanity is evident, and says that Woody knew that she 'would not let him touch all the bases' - by implication, the highly judgemental Kate, his wife (Squibb with great ease makes us dislike her), would. (There is a grim scene in the Lutheran graveyard (Kate is nominally a Catholic), where she calls a dead member of Woody's family a whore for having had sex from the age of fifteen.)
It is here that, bit by bit, we can piece together the influences that have worked on Woody, such as the death of a brother with whom he shared a room, being shot down in Korea when being transferred, and the age at which he and two other men from the town were sent to war, and how he returned from it. The laughter at Woody's expense seemed to have died down by this stage (and, in this respect, the film has the pattern of Philomena (2013)), but where it laid things on a little too thickly was with the vacant relatives, who, for example, are querying the journey-time from Billings, Montana, and even infect David with it, who asks Ross how he travelled over.
At Mount Rushmore (another place that Woody did not wish to see), in what he has to say about the monument not looking finished (which. with his critique, it did not), we are given the insight that how he relates to the world does not mean that he is ignorant and foolish, and, in his way, he just as much speaks the truth as he sees it as Kate does. (Indeed, we hear him dub other drivers idiots, and tell a mechanic that he is using the wrong wrench.)
I think that the script suitably covers objections to some of the things that happen for the purposes of the plot and which get us on the road, and that it works well enough as an exploration of the goals that we set, or expectations that we all have, without needing Woody's background and circumstances - the things that we think that we must have, when really something else (or lesser) might do.
In emotional terms, rather than those symbolic of setting out on a quest (and feeling that compulsion), the film resolves itself - and rights some wrongs - right at the end (even if we do not quite know how it can be done, and maybe it is a bit too pat). What is clear is that David has also been in need of healing from the childhood that he had where he is likened to a girl or a prince, and called beautiful - to assert himself, not least as he does, albeit with a fist, with Woody's former business partner Ed Pegram, and to believe in his worth.
The quest itself turned out to have to be completed, even if it was just to be told that it had not garnered anything except an ironic cap, but probably for other reasons by then. As for having to live with the disparaging Kate, nothing had changed that, and her threats of putting Woody in a home, and she had only defended him out of self-interest, both not to have relatives clamour for money, and to have him as her own victim - except that David certainly has more respect for his father, and in that there is hope...
As for the review on IMDb (by Steven Leibson) that calls this a hilarious comedy, well...
However, I quite liked Mark Kermode's review in The Guardian, so here it is (or gu.com/p/3yvcg/tf, if you wish to share).
There is now a little follow-up piece here...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
