Some people will leave this great film feeling enlivened and happy and others will leave it with a pit of sadness in their stomach. Both are valid responses. A few subjects of this simple narrative are our parents, their mysterious pasts, mortality and how one does or doesn’t make peace with it—and nobody can tell you what to think about that. Director Alexander Payne doesn’t even try. He makes this film for an adult audience who can handle that sort of approach. We get richly drawn characters and just enough artfully unanswered questions that invite us to come to our personal conclusions about what’s really going on in this story of a man in his late 70s who misunderstands (or does he?) one of those junk mail sweepstakes scams and thinks he’s won a million dollars. All he has to do is travel from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect it. Everyone in his life knows it’s not real and won’t drive him, but he refuses to believe and keeps trying to walk the 900 miles there only to always be dragged back home. One of his sons eventually makes the road trip with him, partly to humor him, partly to spend some time with him, and partly to get the hell out of Billings for awhile. Along the way, they stay with relatives and bump into old friends who reveal their true selves when they’re fooled into thinking they’re in the presence of a millionaire.
There’s not a bum note in the entire film, from the beautifully un-beautified small town scenery, shot in stark black and white, to the performances. A 77-year old Bruce Dern gets the plum role as the disheveled and befogged lead. It’s one of the American cinema’s great star turns from a seasoned character-actor—up there with the likes of Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas—and the crowning achievement of a long career. Will Forte brings an unforced warmth and humor as Dern’s son. Meanwhile, an 84-year-old June Squibb steals every scene she’s in, providing wizened comic relief as Dern’s straight-talking wife.