Nebraska is a good if not great movie with a first rate starring role for Bruce Dern, an actor whom I’ve always liked (to say nothing of his daughter…). It’s a tale of a guy in his late 70’s or early 80’s who deludes himself into believing he’s won the million dollar prize from a Publishers Clearing House kind of thing, and wants to go to Nebraska from his home in Montana to collect his prize. He’s clearly beyond his prime, physically and mentally, a life long drinker. After he’s turned back by cops once, by family other times when trying to walk to Nebraska, one of his two sons — also with a somewhat problematical life — decides to drive him.
Eventually Dern’s wife and other son meet up with him in Hawthorne, NE where his brothers and their families live. Prize pick-up is in Lincoln. Film is in black and white. Various adventures, mainly problematical, but some not, occur and the difficult father-son relationship becomes better, and eventually enriched. The acting is uniformly first rate.
It would be difficult for those of us who’ve spent most of our lives in cosmopolitan urban settings not to see the Nebraskans as perfect stereotypes, creatures somewhat lower than ourselves. I was pleased to have had the experience I had working with various scientists and engineers from Nebraska while doing my AZ work, and so was able to escape that.
It’s a movie worth seeing and being reflective about, and it’s great to see the courage and complexity that Dern brings to a starring role.