By BEN CAMERON
DVD
Nebraska
Starring: Bruce Dern, Wil Forte
YOU might be done with the past but the past sure ain’t done with you.
Director Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants) once again captures the quirkiness and sometimes beautiful banality of everyday life in his latest flick, Nebraska.
Every celluloid inch worthy of the Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and much like his previous hit, About Schmidt, Payne conjures the subtle, understated comedy gold found with “getting on” in life, like the skilled alchemist he is.
Here we meet the increasingly senile Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), who takes to the road with his hen-pecked son David (Wil Forte) who he barely recognises, to collect his “winnings” in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Woody might appear clueless about most things, but he’s 100 per cent certain he’s won a million dollars through a magazine competition.
It’s obviously a scam, but Woody won’t hear about it. He just wants the cash to buy himself a new pick-up truck.
A beaten old boozer, Woody doesn’t trust anybody, especially not the US postal service, so he’s prepared to walk interstate to collect his dubious prize in person.
What seemed like a simple road trip on paper takes a massive detour. When they inadvertently end up in Woody’s home town of Hawthorne, old rivalries and a former flame emerge from the past.
An unashamedly simple story with a simple script, which never descends into cheap sentimentality, it relishes in a series of pitch-perfect running gags – you’d never think so many laughs could be squeezed out of a never-returned air compressor.
Payne shows yet again nothing’s as funny, or as strange, as everyday life.
– Ben Cameron
