Nebraska

Director: Alexander Payne

Year of Release: 2013

Shot entirely in black and white and achingly slow, Nebraska is a film that insists on patience and pays off in rich familial subtext. The performances are quietly determined, headlined by Bruce Dern's character who insists against all logic and reason that he's won one million dollars in a mail-in giveaway (think Publisher's Clearinghouse minus the commercials). While on the road to redeem what he's never really going to win, Dern and his youngest son, played by Will Forte, painfully pull back the covers on a few details they didn't know about each others lives. For Forte, it's out of interest and growing concern. For Dern, it's the old ask and you shall receive - though sometimes you may wish you hadn't have asked once you receive. 

The cinematography is excellent, though not in the traditional beautiful sense that many films' looks are judged by. The stark black and white and shades of grey fit into the world being portrayed. Though it's modern times, it may as well be the 1960's for the attitudes and the look of the town of Hawthorn, Nebraska where the bulk of the film plays. The landscapes of the fields and long flat roads disappearing over small foothills, rather than, say, majestic mountains, offer a timelessness that fits the film, too. It's not a time travel film, but in going back to a world they hadn't seen in several decades and seeing how little things had changed, one would forgive Forte for looking around the corner to see of Rod Serling weren't lying in the shadows.