By Michele Baker , M.D.
The Nebraska of director Alexander Payne and writer Bob Nelson’s movie of the same name, shot in iconic black and white, evokes the childhood of the film’s central character. The elderly Woodrow Grant, brought to life by Bruce Dern, is a man with dementia who has a monomaniacal drive to get to Lincoln, Nebraska, in order to collect the $1 million he delusionally believes he has won in what everyone else in his life knows is a misleading advertising scam. Woody’s sidekick on his poignant road trip is his younger son, David, a lovable loser played by the comedian Will Forte. David is an attractive cow-eyed, middle-aged man who can’t seal any deal. He won’t commit to his girlfriend, and he can’t sell a set of speakers or even properly pronounce the names of his customers. He doesn’t seem to be aware of the requirements for life. “David—you need to water these plants. These are plants,” departing girlfriend Noel tells him early in the film, before he turns from her to answer yet another of his exasperated mother’s pleas for him to go find his father, who has yet again taken off on foot for Nebraska.
His salty mother, Kate, played by the hilarious June Squibb, is outraged that David is willing to chauffeur his father on his fool’s mission, but he will not be budged. He understands, as he tells her, that his dad “just needs something to live for.” As the two men cross the American upper Midwest, David seems to get to know his father as a person for the first time, joining him in taverns and asking him questions about his life and relationships. His father challenges him to join him on his own terms, and to be his version of a man, saying, “Have a drink with your old man—be somebody.” He defends his drinking, telling his son, “I served my country. I pay my taxes.” Though we the audience are at first invited to judge the old man as a neglectful alcoholic who didn’t care about his kids, as we come along for the ride we begin to have more empathy for him.
When Woody and David are waylaid in Woody and Kate’s hometown, the Nebraskan micro-hamlet of Hawthorne, Kate and David’s brother Ross join them for an impromptu family reunion. In Hawthorne, David deepens his sense of his parents in context, learning that Woody was shot down during the Korean War and had other girlfriends besides Kate. He gets to know Woody and Kate as sexual beings: Woody liked “to screw,” and according to the confident Kate, she had several suitors “chafing at their trousers” trying to “get in [her] bloomers.” I found the scenes in Woody’s broken-down childhood home incredibly moving. All together the two brothers and their mother support Woody up the stairs of the Grant homestead and tour the rooms, including the one where Woody’s toddler brother died in the bed they shared. They see how Woody grew up, with more than half a dozen siblings, threatened with beatings by their parents. The family also has a farcical adventure as the two boys attempt to exact revenge on their father’s behalf by stealing an air-compressor.
Though David knows that Woody has not, in fact, won a large amount of money, we the viewers are swept up in the possibility that maybe he has. The audience identifies with what analysts would call Woody’s hypomanic defense. His insistence that he is a winner covers his shame and diminished sense of self. He wants so badly to be admired: “Did you see the looks on those fellas’ faces?” he calls to David after telling his old cronies that he has won a million dollars. His fantasies of what he would do with the winnings are rich with symbolic meaning: The new truck, which he can’t even drive, seems to represent success. The compressor, for which he has no real use in the present, represents the return of that which was taken from him, or lost. Most important, Woody wants to leave his sons a legacy. “It’s for you boys,” he tells David when asked why he needs so much money to buy a truck and a piece of machinery to spray paint: “I wanted to leave you something,” Woody confesses.
By letting David know that he wants to give him the money, Woody leaves him with something far more precious. David carries his father across the finish line of his quest, all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska, seemingly barely alive, flapping in his hospital gown. Of course Woody has not won the sweepstakes. His son witnesses his final defeat. Slumped in the passenger seat with the ghastly “Prize Winner” cap atop his bruised head, Woody seems to have fully deflated. But David cannot bear to see his father so small. Like a personal Make-A-Wish Foundation, David decides at this moment to make his father’s dreams come true. He trades in his old car for a truck in his father’s name and purchases a brand-new compressor. Woody, resurrected by his son’s care, drives “his” (nearly new) truck through the center of his hometown as the people from his past admire him. David, lying down on the seat, literally looks up to his father, finally able to know and fully love him.
As in a successful analysis, a journey through the past leads to growth in the present. David, initially vague and limp, ends the film energized. The final long shot of the movie, in which David takes over for his father, getting into the driver’s seat of their truck, shows him finally becoming a man. Perhaps he will now be able to drive more quickly than 750 miles per 48 hours. David knows that his time with his father is short.
The wonderful score by Tin Hat serves as an elegy for their relationship, just as the film pays homage to a disappearing America.
