OVP: Nebraska (2013)

Film: Nebraska (2013)

Stars: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk

Director: Alexander Payne

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Bruce Dern, Supporting Actress-June Squibb, Original Screenplay, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I swear I used to like Alexander Payne movies.  I remember adoring Election the first time I saw it; so snappy and full of cuts and bruises and truth.  I remember thinking that Sideways, while yes, a tad overrated, was a strong movie with some great sequences and a killer performance from Virginia Madsen.

Yet when I saw The Descendants, all of that changed.  I no longer got the appeal of his wandering camera.  His routine got so staid, much like that of his characters.  Even the bits that I loved about The Descendants (Judy Greer was dynamite in that movie) are gone in Nebraska, which may be the least of the films I have seen in Payne’s résumé.  This is a boring, tired movie with occasional insights but rarely anything approaching realism or perspective.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is the tale of Woody Grant (Dern), a man who is at the end of a long and unremarkable life.  In the throes of dementia, he confuses a junk mail scam for a $1 million lottery win, and sets off from Billings to Omaha, Nebraska, to get his inheritance.  His son David (Forte) is constantly trying to stop him from going on this pointless (and at his age, dangerous) journey, and his wife Kate (Squibb) is frustrated that her husband won’t let this belief die.

Woody and David set out on a mission to get the million dollars (or in the case of David, prove that it’s just a scam), and are eventually joined by Kate and David’s older brother Ross (Odenkirk).  They stay for a while in Woody and Kate’s hometown of Hawthorne meeting with family who believes Woody wholeheartedly, and they, along with Woody’s old business partner Ed (Keach) decide to see if they can get their share of the winnings from a drifting away Woody.

The film has a great plot, and on very rare occasions, says something about its subject.  There’s a scene late in the film (easily the best scene in the movie, and the only one of any significance in regard to Squibb’s acting ability) where Kate and David take on the rest of the family, and secret resentments start to spill out from a family that clearly used to be close but time and alcoholism (Woody is clearly dependent on the sauce, and his son fears he could get there soon) have driven a split between them.  It’s this sort of thing that Payne is at his best with-the ugliness of day-to-day life, and the way we live with such few significant achievements that something that happened decades ago can still feel fresh.

But that’s about it in a movie that tries too hard to be cute, especially in the first half.  It’s easy for the audience to be able to tell that Woody is slowly going away in his mind, and it’s beyond ludicrous to assume that everyone would trust the drifting Woody and not his rational son David.  The movie also doesn’t find time to resolve some of its more interesting plotlines, such as the part with Angela McEwan, who plays a woman whom Woody dated in his youth and she clearly hasn’t let go of, or the nastiness of Woody and Kate’s marriage (I hated that last little kiss, since it ran contrary to almost everything before it).

This would be a film that would be easy to forgive, but like American Hustle before it, it decided to be nominated for an Oscar, and so that tougher lens goes up (I honestly wouldn’t have thought about this film for a second and dismissed it as a small work from a significant director were it not for those six big Oscar nominations).  While I thought that Dern was fine, I don’t see anything truly great going on here-this is a man who drifts through his performance, but stoicism and keeping the same expression doesn’t mean deep and nuanced, and I feel like we’re projecting a bit on Dern rather than him lending to us.  Squibb’s work is even less consequential-she’s an old woman swearing and talking about sex, which for some reason people always respond to, but that’s it.  In a year where Sarah Paulson was finding such in-born evil or Octavia Spencer was struggling with tough love and Emma Watson was channeling vapid and materialistic, this is a slot the Academy decided to just give away?  Over even Oprah Winfrey and her scene-stealing in The Butler?  Come on-you can do better.

And before I end this diatribe, I have to say that the most disappointing nomination was Phedon Papamichael’s for cinematography.  Just because a movie is in black-and-white doesn’t make it serene and beautiful.  It’s just a lack of color, and to get it over Lubezki’s captivating To the Wonder or Sean Bobbitt’s bayou murkiness in 12 Years a Slave is an absolute crime.

Those were my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you agree with Nebraska’s nominations?  Do you think that it will win any Oscars?  And what do you wish Alexander Payne would tackle next?