Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)

Bruce Dern and Will Forte in Nebraska

Cast: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacey Keach, Bob Odenkirk, Mary Louise Wilson, Rance Howard, Tim Driscoll, Kevin Ratray, Angela McEwan, Glendora Stitt, Elizabeth Moore, Kevin Kunkel. Screenplay: Bob Nelson. Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael. Production design: J. Dennis Washington. Film editing: Kevin Tent. Music: Mark Orton. 

Like Joel and Ethan Coen's Fargo (1996) and Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), Alexander Payne's Nebraska takes place in the hollowed-out heartland of the United States. But where those movies went for satire and dark comedy, Payne is going for something tonally more subtle. Pathos nudges up against humor in Nebraska's story of cantankerous old Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), whose emerging dementia persuades him that he has won a million dollars from one of those dodgy but legal magazine subscription promotions like Publishers Clearing House, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Despite the protests of his long-suffering wife, Kate (June Squibb), and his sons, David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk), he continues to insist on going from his home in Billings, Montana, to collect his winnings in Lincoln, Nebraska, even if he has to walk there -- he has lost his drivers license for DUI. After the highway patrol finds him walking along the freeway and brings him back, David finally gives up and agrees to take him to Lincoln, knowing that the trip won't end well but hoping it will put an end to the delusion. The film is longer than it should be -- the side trip to Mount Rushmore is unnecessary -- and there's a whiff of condescension in its portrayal of the residents of the decaying small towns of middle America, but it raked in Oscar nominations for picture, cinematography, and direction, and well-deserved ones for Dern and Squibb. 

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)

Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Paul Giamatti, and Dominic Sessa in The Holdovers

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Carrie Preston, Brady Hepner, Ian Dolley, Jim Kaplan, Michael Provost, Andrew Garman, Naheem Garcia, Gillian Vigman, Tate Donovan. Screenplay: David Hemingson. Cinematography: Eigil Bryld. Production design: Ryan Warren Smith. Film editing: Kevin Tent. Music: Mark Orton. 

Citizen Ruth (Alexander Payne, 1996)

Laura Dern and Kurtwood Smith in Citizen Ruth

Ruth Stoops: Laura Dern
Diane Siegler: Swoosie Kurtz
Norm Stoney: Kurtwood Smith
Gail Stoney: Mary Kay Place
Rachel: Kelly Preston
Harlan: M.C. Gainey
Dr. Charlie Rollins: Kenneth Mars
Blaine Gibbons: Burt Reynolds
Jessica Weiss: Tippi Hedren

Director: Alexander Payne
Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Cinematography: James Glennon
Production design: Jane Ann Stewart
Film editing: Kevin Tent
Music: Rolfe Kent

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim," said George Santayana, a statement quoted by Chuck Jones in commenting on his inspiration for Wile E. Coyote's futile pursuit of the Road Runner. It applies equally well to most of the characters in Citizen Ruth, with the exception of Ruth herself, whose only clear aim, getting high, she never forgets. Director Alexander Payne and co-screenwriter Jim Taylor crafted an audacious satire on political fanaticism, focused specifically on the American furor over abortion, but still applicable 22 years later to almost all of the many political controversies, from gun control to collusion with foreign powers, that dominate our divided discourse. Ruth Stoops is a hopeless case, too addled by whatever she can get her hands on to produce a state of narcosis and too much a product of societal breakdown to ever be the focus of anybody's cause. But when a judge, learning that Ruth is pregnant with a fifth unwanted child, suggests that he might go easy on sentencing her if she'll have an abortion, she is first snapped up by right-to-life advocates and then blunders her way into the opposing camp of freedom-to-choose proponents. Eventually, her decision (which Ruth is incapable of arriving at rationally) begins to be swayed by a bidding war between the two groups, each of which offers her money -- a rather paltry $15,000 that seems like a fortune to the indigent Ruth -- either to have the baby or to abort the fetus. There are those who find the plight of Ruth no laughing matter, and they're right. But Payne manages to stay on the far side of reality in his treatment of the subject, and he benefits from a company of actors capable of teetering on the edge of caricature without actually lapsing into it. Laura Dern manages to find something sweetly naive in Ruth that makes her headlong self-destructiveness both touching and funny. She is a hopeless case, just as a resolution of the abortion debate seems hopeless, too.