Nebraska

Alexander Payne (Sideways) met quite a lot of resistance when making Nebraska. His studio insisted he choose a famous actor like Robert Duvall or Gene Hackman for the leading role. His distributor was adamantly against black-and-white. Fortunately he ignored these demands.
There’s no better performer conceivable to play Woody Grant, a born loser with ambitions that dissolved in alcohol, than Bruce Dern, the actor who started promisingly in the 1970s but never broke through. As Woody, a role that won him the prize for best actor at Cannes, he may well have given his best performance ever.
Together with his son David, Woody travels from Montana to Nebraska, where he thinks he has won the lottery. On the way, the two meet a variety of acquaintances and relatives to whom Woody owes money. While Woody’s wafer-thin version of the American Dream implodes, David tries to get through to the father he never really knew. The black-and-white imbues this tragicomic road movie with apt nostalgia.

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