Bruce Dern and Will Forte (Paramount)

Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) believes what people tell him. We meet him on the shoulder of I-90 in Billings, Montana, on the way to collect what he believes is his fortune. A marketing firm in Lincoln sent him a sweepstakes letter telling him he may be a winner. The towering sign of the L.P. Anderson Tire Factory—whose old-fashioned, Googie-esque design is the mark of an area that hasn’t moved forward in decades—is on his left. Is he going the right way?

Woody’s son David (Will Forte) is the family shepherd who goes after Woody when he goes astray. Like his father, his life is going in an uncertain direction too. David’s live-in girlfriend just moved out. He’s stuck in an unrewarding job selling stereo equipment. So when David takes time from work to drive his father to Nebraska, it’s not with a real destination in mind. They’re both lost.

For much of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, the cranky, deluded elderly father in the struggling economy of America’s heartland is played for laughs. It’s a career high for Bruce Dern, an actor who was once Hollywood’s go-to creepy guy—his Tom Buchanan runs sinister rings around Joel Edgerton’s in Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby. As a leading man, Dern has not fared as well—have you seen Tattoo? Dern is the tragic figure at the center of Nebraska, but as a friend pointed out, he’s surrounded by comedians. His sons David and Ross (Bob Odenkirk) are played by actors known from SNL and Mr. Show. Forte’s David in particular has a clean, generic voice that sounds like he’s about to sell a product at any minute. It’s his job after all. But he’s also trying to sell himself a bill of goods, and he hasn’t succeeded in that either.

On the way to Lincoln, Woody has a bad fall, and Grant and son take refuge in Hawthorne, the Nebraska town where he grew up. Nebraska is a family movie through and through, but it’s here that the movie’s look at the American family turns into the director’s signature cynicism. When the citizens of Hawthorne—most of whom have always looked at Woody as somebody they can take advantage of—find out about his supposed fortunes, they descend upon him like heartland vultures.

Will Forte, Bruce Dern and Stacy Keach (Paramount)

Woody’s senescent urge to walk, even if it’s in the wrong direction, seems to reflect his life. Dern isn’t given a lot of dialogue, and is at his best against Stacey Keach, playing Woody’s old rival Ed Pegram. Forte grows into the sad sack that he plays, and for me, the movie works best in the kind of scenes that more cynical viewers might call soft. If the proceedings sometimes come off as mean-spirited jabs at middle America, the movie’s final act turns serious and sentimental, and turn this into a story not of lost men but of a father and son who finally find their relationship.

I wish Nebraska had been shot on real black and white film. Cinematography by Phedon Papamichael was desaturated to achieve the monochromatic look here, and like the movie itself, it’;s not entirely successful. It doesn’t have the tonal range of the American independent films that inspire it. Nebraska would have made a great photo book, its images recalling the Hopperesque monochromes of Robert Adams.

My critical detachment went out the window after a pivotal detail that transforms Bruce Dern into someone who reminds me very much of my late father. The movie’s final act may be too sentimental for fans of Payne’s satire, but that’s what worked for me. It’s a funny thing about the movies and America: You get out of it what you put into it. Maybe the wide open plains travelled in this road movie are like movie screens onto which we can project our own feelings about America and family. I don’t think Nebraska is a great movie, but that it can make you either laugh and/or cry means that it’s achieved something.

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Nebraska
Directed by Alexander Payne
Written by Bob Nelson
With Bruce Dern, WIll Forte, Jane Squibb, Stacy Keach
Rated R for some language
Opens Today at Landmark E Street Cinema, Landmark Bethesda Row and Angelika Mosaic