Presented at AFI FEST 2013 as a special tribute to legendary star Bruce Dern – with glowing introductory remarks by Quentin Tarantino – director Alexander Payne’s NEBRASKA (2013) was also honored with an AFI AWARD in 2013, recognizing it as one of the year’s most outstanding achievements in the art of the moving image. According to the official rationale, “NEBRASKA paints a stark portrait of Midwestern America – a Rockwell drained of both color and nostalgia, but nonetheless infused with astounding depth and sentiment. Shadows cast with austere beauty by director Alexander Payne reveal innumerable shades of gray in the film’s characters – evoking empathy, if not sympathy, for an embittered family on an unlikely pilgrimage. Bruce Dern’s million-dollar performance as wayward patriarch Woody Grant creates a quietly stirring and darkly comic study on aging, and Will Forte shines as the son who helps Woody look to the future as the long, open road of memory disappears in the rear-view mirror.”
Visit the AFI Catalog to learn more about NEBRASKA.
