What is it about the state of Nebraska that drives its chroniclers to restrict themselves to black and white? Before Alexander Payne's Nebraska came Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, with its David Michael Kennedy cover photo and monochromatic music (just voice and guitar, in spare demo versions). For Springsteen, the monochrome signified a return to stark simplicity, in defiance of the rock 'n' roll industrial complex that wanted big sparkly hits. In Alexander Payne's Nebraska, the colorlessness is more in line with what Peter Bogdanovich did in The Last Picture Show—elevating the mundane to the poetic through stately, serious black and white. But where Bogdonavich's black and white suggested a town blasted colorless by flatland winds, Payne's feels editorial, a choice as ostentatious as a gilt frame in communicating that This Is an Important Work of Art.
This might prove annoying if Payne's Nebraska weren't a VIP artwork packed with just the type of tiny, messy interactions that flower into something almost mythic when writ large, in black and white. The basic plot: An elderly man named Woody (Bruce Dern), with a drinking problem and what seems to be early-stage dementia, receives a letter announcing his win of a million-dollar sweepstakes prize. His adult son (Will Forte) tries to convince him that he's actually won nothing beyond the opportunity to buy magazines, but Woody will not be deterred, and soon, father and son are on a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to claim the million-dollar prize.
The trip bogs down in Woody's former hometown, where he's laid up with medical issues and welcomed by a motley assortment of old friends and family. Soon, the whole town's buzzing about Woody's million-dollar fortune, and things begin to fray, fascinatingly. Payne mined drama from the collision of family and fortune in his previous film, The Descendants, but he takes it even further here, in scenes that range from light psychodrama (Stacy Keach has a great supporting turn as a diabolical old friend) to light slapstick (a couple of "redneck cousins" are played for problematic laughs).
For his role as the deluded Woody, Bruce Dern won the best actor award at this year's Cannes, but for Nebraska viewers, the key to the film will most likely be Will Forte, a longtime Saturday Night Live cast member who does something small and powerful with his first dramatic lead. For the film's opening half, Forte's David is a lightly deluded drip. But as experiences accumulate and he comes to understand, through asides and gossip and quiet confessions, who his father is, he grows into something close to a hero. The final scene of this smart, sad, sweet film is one I'll never forget. 
