REVIEW - NEBRASKA

A graceful amalgamation of fantasy and reality, formed both for and out of America's midwest. Comedy and drama arise from Bob Nelson's script and Alexander Payne's direction, each in the superb distillation of the region's (and its inhabitants') character, and in the dramatist's need to satiate narrative urges. In dotting its Is and crossing its Ts, Nebraska becomes a tribute to this curious culture, so consuming, so expansive, yet so remote and detached in its entirety from coastal American culture. And in the sweet, piquant accuracy with which it depicts this culture, this tribute is legitimised. Despite its vast open landscapes and state-spanning storyline, Nebraska's reach is deep rather than broad, subtly and respectfully burrowing further into the minds of its lead characters, particularly Bruce Dern's Woody Grant. Woody acquiesces to be dragged (albeit delicately) into his past, retracing the trajectory of his life to try to undo all the wrong turns he's taken, those which have brought him to such an unsatisfactory place in his old age. And all quite unintentionally. It's only in the film's closing scene that he's afforded the opportunity to tie a bow on it. Over these two hours, the comic figure we initially have in our heads is scrubbed out, and replaced piece by piece by a figure of enormous detail, realised with an outstanding apprehension of character by Nelson, Payne and Dern. Musical score by Mark Orton is soothing and well-suited; Phedon Papamichael's monochrome cinematography somehow captures the infinite hues of beige and dust better than colour imaging might have.