Alexander Payne is becoming mid-America’s version of Woody Allen, making small-scale, personal movies in unique, interesting ways.  His feature films Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004) and The Descendants (2011) feature quirky characters in realistic situations taken to absurd limits, enacted by wonderful actors. His films aren’t made for teenyboppers; they center on middle-aged characters who have issues with their parents, and their children, and the films don’t shy away from rather raw depictions of sexuality and human interaction.  They are all comedies that base their amusement on human foibles, pretentiousness and absurdity.

Payne’s latest film, Nebraska, is his first that is written by someone else (Bob Nelson), yet it has Payne’s feel throughout.  Lensed in black and white, Nebraska  introduces us to David Grant (Will Forte, a comedian in a very serious role), a man trying to prevent his elderly father Woody (Bruce Dern) from walking from Billings, Montana, to Nebraska to claim a sweepstakes prize.  It doesn’t matter how many times David or his mother Kate (June Squibb) tell Woody that he hasn’t won anything — the old man is convinced that he has won and he’s willing to die trying to collect it. So David does the only thing he can do, which is to take time off of work and drive his father to Nebraska.  Along the way they stop at Woody’s home town, visiting old friends and family, where complications ensue.

Ostensibly a comedy of embarrassment where the old man’s failure to understand a common magazine sweepstakes campaign is the butt of the joke, Nebraska is instead a tart yet poignant view of aging modern families in a world designed for the young. Woody, partly deaf and toothless, shuffles endlessly toward the only hope he has left to experience something worthwhile in life, uncaring that his wife and sons refuse to share his vision.  His wife Kate is far more pragmatic and unwilling to put up with Woody’s nonsense; she is as solid as a rock, yet filled with feelings of resentment and anger.  The grown sons (Forte and Bob Odenkirk) dread their father’s decline into senility but don’t know how to prevent it.  All they can do is try to keep him alive and occasionally find his missing teeth.

This may not sound funny, but the film finds riches of humor within the relationships and the situations in which the characters find themselves.  The funniest scene occurs when the boys decide to avenge a wrong done their father years before.  And the tart-tongued Kate is always ready with an acidic quip, insult or outrageous act that flouts all manner of propriety.  Much like About Schmidt and Sideways, Payne finds a great deal in the human condition that is humorous, witty and cutely mordant.

The acting is superb.  Bruce Dern, always a consummate professional, convincingly portrays a man gradually losing his faculties.  He underplays the role, which works beautifully when he has a sharp retort or a meaningful moment.  June Squibb is sensational as his long-suffering wife, delivering sexually-charged lines with aplomb and yet tender in a few key scenes.  Will Forte and Bob Odenkirk are very believable as grown men trying to connect with the father who never showed them very much affection, and Stacy Keach is properly suave and bombastic as Woody’s former business partner.

Except for a clumsy bar scene late in the story and an inevitable denouement that cannot sustain the story’s momentum, Nebraska is a wonderful character-driven movie.  The black and white filming is curious yet fitting to its subject and tone, while Mark Orton’s subtle score is just right.  It’s all paced slowly and quite deliberately, needlessly rated R (for language and innuendo), and yet this film is full of rewards for patient viewers who enjoy sharp writing and a unique, personal perspective on life.  ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2.  15 January 2014.