Nebraska

As you may (or may not) infer, the subject of Nebraska may well be Nebraska. In particular, the collision between the two connotations of the state that make it a useful emblem for current America as a whole.

Or as a hole. The black and white wide screen photography expresses the state’s openness. The space isolates its inhabitants and embodies the bleakness of its mundane lives — but director Alexander Payne finds a remnant beauty there still. There’s a tension between the vastness of the space and the narrowness of its characters’ lives. Hence the Hawthorne, Nebraska, Grant family scenes, glued brain-dead to the TV, their terse conversations proof that these still waters run shallow. 

Despite all that emptiness Nebraska is also known for the remarkable volume and variety of celebrities it has produced. Not just dolts like L. Ron Hubbard, Dick Cheney and Gerald Ford but national icons like Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, the Astaires, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda, Hoot Gibson, Harold Lloyd, Nick Nolte, Robert Taylor, Darryl Zanuck  — and yes, that brilliant film director Alexander Payne. Not to mention the jocks like Grover Cleveland Alexander, Max Baer, Bob Gibson, Frank Leahy, Andy Roddick, Gale Sayers and of course especially Gorgeous George. That’s an impressive — and disproportionate — amount of stardom for a state defined by emptiness. 

From such an unpromising landscape, such success has arisen. That, in a nutshell, is the American Dream, which promises that a magnificent life can be achieved there through hard work and freedom. As wife Kate (June Squibb) contends, 

I never knew the son of a bitch even wanted to be a millionaire! He should have thought about that years ago and worked                         for it!.

But he didn’t. Instead a Publishers House Clearance-type of come-on seduces him into another surviving myth, American exceptionalism. Without any effort on his part, for no reason, Woody believes he has won a million dollars. His certainty wards off everyone else’s logic and argument. Woody’s stubbornness, Alzheimerian obliviousness to reality, and sense of personal due effectively represents the Tea Party Republican’s delusion of a long-past power and authority. The bar-room losers want to believe his delusion because they have no meaning in their own lives. Note the total absence of children in this film -- except for the Hawthorne photographer.  

The film also satirizes that party’s ostensible support of traditional family values. The Grants are not especially close. They bristle with envy, dislike, resentment. The two hick cousins gloat over how long it took the fancy pants David (Will Forte) to drive in from Billings, Montana. They will later mug Woody and David to steal the winning ticket. Yet they sustain the pretence of closeness and pleasure at Woody’s supposed windfall. His old partner Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach) shows that a longtime business partner and close friend can be as mean, destructive and untrustworthy as family. He stole Woody’s air compressor and tried to get into Kate’s bloomers.

Woody finally does realize his dream, a new truck and an air compressor. But they come from the filial generosity of David, not from some miraculous lottery. David is the less successful son, just now losing his girl friend, selling home theatres for a living, where the married Ross (Bob Odenkirk) is being promoted to anchor on the local TV news show. Woody’s dream is realized by his more modest, realistic son, not the one with the better image. This contrast is implicit when Woody urges the on-the-wagon David to “Have a drink with your old man. Be somebody!” It’s David who stands by Woody, attends his humiliation in the bar and punches out Pegram. Even more generous than trading his Subaru for a truck in Woody’s name, David ducks out of sight for Woody’s triumphant last drive out of Lincoln.

We share David’s gradual discovery that there is more value in Woody than meets the judgmental eye. This jaw-droppingly stupid old alkie used to be a very good man, capable, attractive, whose generous nature was constantly exploited by his family and friends. As now they all try to again. Down in his luck and out of his mind, all he can do is doggedly plod on towards his delusion. As David learns at the lottery office, Woody is not unique. There are other mad old dreamers like him, possibly some in higher places.   

David gains some insight into his father from Woody’s old girlfriend Peg (Angela McEwan), who now runs her dead husband’s newspaper. Clearly an attractive, sensible woman, she was attracted to Woody and cares for him still. There’s a distinct wistfulness when she sees him driving away. But she lost him to Kate by refusing to let him round the bases with her. Kate was not so restrained so won the husband she now suffers and berates. But her love is evidenced when she tenderly kisses the comatose man in the hospital.    

What makes Kate the film’s most compelling and positive character is her earthy realism.  There are no airs or delusions about her. She did what she had to to win Woody and she does what she must to preserve him. That no-nonsense realism is confirmed when she flashes at a suitor’s grave “what you could have had if you hadn’t kept talking about grain” and when she gives her inlaws her climactic instruction (“Go — yourselves”). She liked Woody’s little sister Rose, “but my god, she was a slut.” Kate refuses to honey coat reality. Indeed David is often embarrassed by his mother’s earthy candour:

— Jesus Mom! Was the whole town trying to seduce you?

— These boys grow up staring at the rear ends of cows and pigs, it's only natural that a real woman will get them chafing their pants. 

     Not just a real woman, Kate is a real Nebraskan, a real American. She is the honest and positive alternative to the Republicans’ moral pretensions.  The couple who congratulate Woody in the restaurant, the one friendly friend he meets in the street and the couple from whom the sons steal the first compressor have a generosity of spirit but they lack Kate's candour. Her realism is the bracing model for her corrupt inlaws and her country in its present state.