Alexander Payne
Nebraska

Coincidences.

We drove into the city by car, mine, since he, until the investigations are over, can't drive anymore. I've been listening to Elvis Presley for the past few days and specifically it's the melody of "In The Ghetto" that echoes most between the windows as we devour the wet asphalt separating us from the cinema. That song will come up in a scene of the movie and the odds that, among the 16 GB of songs, I would choose that particular melody... Well, they weren't high.

It's a period in sync with the dreary and cold weather, during which I've returned to spending a lot of time at my parents' house. I could say that, after leaving the nest, I've almost moved back. He has some worrying health issues and while waiting for the results, I want to spend a lot of time with him because I resemble him and I feel what he doesn't say and keeps to himself. The second coincidence is that the protagonist of this Alexander Payne's work is also an elderly parent who is about the same age as mine. "Nebraska", in an original way, not only by the clever choice of using black and white that fits well with the desolate landscapes and the infinite spaces repeatedly photographed, explores the relationship between a father and a son when, due to age and health reasons, roles begin to reverse.

During the screening, I turned to him and wanted to do something I don't remember ever doing: hug him. He is perfectly lucid, but he feels confined in expressing his thoughts, struggles to find words, and has to use with tremendous efforts, which destroy me thinking of his former oratory skills, synonyms that do not always fit. What terrified him is seeing his handwriting transform into something that resembles him, but isn't his. I never know if it's appropriate to help him when he stumbles into silence or if those pauses might spur him on. I've put my social life on hold and, with my mother, I try to go to the cinema frequently, make him talk, stimulate him to read and write to express his opinions. He had such beautiful handwriting. I gave him a Moleskine and wrote on the first page what I never had the courage to tell him, but it was a stupid idea because it's too much effort for him unless I insist. Now I'm the one giving him homework. Simply absurd! I scold him good-naturedly with a false plastered smile on my face, thinking about when it was him who, frankly, without many smiles...
I watch him as the film continues and he laughs when there's something to laugh at, but for most of the work, the laughs the director gives us are extremely bitter. They are crooked, disproportionate, and sharp laughs, especially for those getting on in years and particularly for those starting to have some issues. And I wonder why on earth I didn't read the synopsis. I can't help but feel like a complete fool, a sadist, and a masochist, because I couldn't have chosen a worse movie with the entire universe at my disposal.

Sometimes I think it would have been better if my parents had been younger: when I was born they were already past their forties, and so now I don't yet have a family of my own and priorities, let's call them responsibilities, that would keep me busy and partly justify less involvement. How awful! I would like to say that, when I noticed something was wrong, my first thought was for my father, but the truth is I told myself "let's hope it's not that sneaky thing that ends with 'er' because, as far as I know, it can be hereditary." The film is precisely about the selfishness of the human being, its sneakiness, and uses as a counterbalance a wonderful son who does what few would do. A splendid passage from Saramago comes to mind in "Death with Interruptions". I hope it's just a small, partially treatable stroke and not that degenerative thing that I can't even pronounce: but if Walt Disney doesn’t want to pass by here, will I be able to approach the son of this cinematic work or the grandson of that book? I remember I had written a very harsh editorial on the subject years ago on debaser and to refresh my memory I read it from time to time to kill these sleepless nights. I sometimes yield to the image of a hand that turns on a switch; beginning to believe wouldn't be bad because it's in moments like these that having a crutch would be handy.  But it doesn't work that way, and in the end, it wouldn't even be right: I have to face reality suffering and helping, without any spiritual heroin dealers and false hopes. And damn it!

All this personal rambling, sorry, just to say that Alexander Payne did a great job. Compared to the light-hearted and somewhat sly tones of "Sideways" and "The Descendants", which in my opinion are still quite enjoyable, he goes back towards "About Schmidt" but with greater strength and without drops throughout the duration of the work. Using a touching cinematography, a soundtrack tailored to the images, concise dialogues well rendered by a homogeneous cast (look up the names on Wikipedia, don't ask me), he managed to combine drama, depressing realism of contemporary society, with a harrowing sweetness and a hint of sarcasm. The result is a cinematographic work that deeply hits the viewer. The risk was to create a mawkish and indigestible rhetorical stew. Sure, I find myself typing away at night with salty water running down my eyes. Liquid stuff that had been missing for at least a couple of years, but this is only because these little, tremendous coincidences, these precise stabs inflicted by a chance serial killer director, have severed some strings and released what I've kept inside for these eternal weeks.

Aside from personal experiences, January 2014 has gifted me with three good films ("The Mafia Kills Only in Summer", "Human Capital", "American Hustle"), a total disappointment with a criminal ending ("Philomena"), and a great work. "Nebraska". I don't want to evaluate it for the personal twists that have entwined around it, but I am sure I will remember it for a long time, even if it doesn't win any statuettes in March.