'Nebraska'

Down And Out With Alzheimers

There are these places on Earth that were once bustling communities that are now in decay because the young have moved away. The old are left behind and some of them are giving way to Alzheimers and otter degenerative diseases. The communities continue but the sense of decay is everywhere. It's happening in rural Australia as it is in Japan and America. As we move from industrial to post-industrial and whatever it is that comes after that, we often don't think about these communities a whole lot. We know they're there, we make a mental note of it, but we don't exactly picture the emotional bleakness surrounding these people.
This film decides to illustrate that bleakness.

What's Good About It

It's nice to see a very human, naturalistic film for a change. The indie film circuit is probably full of these things but you don't come across them that often. The blackened white cinematography is nice and stark while the misc en scene is quite exquisite. The wind swept plans of Nebraska evoke a loneliness and desperate fear of isolation while the clearness of the air makes the light even more stark than one would imagine.

It's a bleak kind of journey through sections of what might be described as flyover land. It's not a place one goes to, looking for joy. The usual trope is to go looking for weirdos, which is what the Coen Brothers did with 'Fargo'. It does deserve a different look.

What's Bad About It

Maybe it's just me dragging the trauma of watching '12 Years A Slave' only weeks ago. It's kind of hard to take serious the kind of ethnographic investigation of rural white people in Nebraska when the realty of race relations in America is a lot more dire. With documentaries like these also going on, you sort of wonder if the film really dug deep enough into these characters.

I know it's rural America and very unlikely but this film has no black people in it. No minorities except a couple of Mexicans who are outrightly portrayed as the other. Race issues like this don't often come front and centre but this is 2014. This film is by negation, a trip through the bleak heartland of white person rural space. While it might be demographically accurate, the film feels very skewed for it.

What's Interesting About It

Age is a terrible thing. Spelling it out is no great shakes in the insight business. All the same, the film underscores the general bleakness of life with the bleakness of ageing. We relate to the younger son who is navigating his own strange path through a post-GFC America, and laugh along at the casting of Bob Odenkirk as the older brother, but above all we're made to sit in with Bruce Dern playing this old man who's lost it. The drinking holes and lounge rooms of the forgotten America are depicted with the kind of downbeat grit not seen since 'The Last Picture Show'. In many ways this film is spiritual descendant of that film which trawled the country town bleakness of youth. This is the film that trawls the country town in old age and puts us face to face with faded glories.

The film is more evocative than anything else, and proceeds to show minutiae and detail in such a way to form a flowing narrative. Our incredulity is carried by the son David played by William Forte, as the diminished father stumbles and falls and staggers. There are no moments of glory to be found like in 'Gran Torino'. The salvation the film offers is as delusory as the sweepstakes ticket itself.

The Shattered Identity, The Absent Cars

The old men talk bout cars. It's the sort of dialogue that follows on from 'Gran Torino' that glorified Detroit but in this film the products of Detroit are strangely absent. Without them the identity of these elderly men is somewhat compromised, largely moth-balled and basically incomplete. We spend time in a Subaru Outback and a little bit more in a Kia hatchback. Eventually the film settles for a big American pick up truck, but it doesn't fill us with a sense of greatness of the vehicle. We're more struck by how arbitrary the truck is, and that the emotional investiture in vehicles made by Americans is a love song, sung as an empty gesture.