Three Beautiful Things 12-11-2025: *Nebraska* and 1983 and 84, Burgers and Floods and Mortality at the Elks, Carol Kane and Her Mother on Film

1. Back in January 1983 and again in 1984, I taught a course at Whitworth called The Family in American Drama. We studied plays and movies that focused on stories about American families. 

I finished watching the movie Nebraska early this afternoon and experienced flashbacks to that course, still fairly fresh in my mind these forty-two years later. (It's a course I never had the chance to teach again.)

I knew then and I know now that I taught that course not only because one of my focus areas in grad school was 20th century American Drama, but because, fueled by some of the self-righteousness (not all bad) that comes with being twenty-nine years old, I was upset with how the traditional nuclear family was being romanticized by certain organizations and politicians and I wanted to teach a course that countered that idealized view of the family with what I thought were more realistic portrayals of the difficulties, tensions, and fragility of the family unit as explored in American plays and movies.

Watching Nebraska called to mind how emotionally demanding and satisfying that course was. 

I found Nebraska to be demanding and satisfying much like those plays and movies from over forty years ago. 

One focus of that course was on the power of illusions, especially when characters lived as if things they dreamed to be true really were true, even as actuality pushed back on them, often with tragic results. 

Nebraska is such a story. 

The main character, Woody (played brilliantly by Bruce Dern), becomes convinced that he's won a million dollars in a Clearing House-like sweepstakes and this illusion dominates him, his relationship with his family, and the story. 

I won't say anything else about how this story plays out.

I can say that I spent much of the movie afraid for Woody and that's why I turned it off in the late evening four days ago and waited to finish it this afternoon so that, if need be, I'd have plenty of time to recover. 

Today, as I returned to the movie, I could tell the movie's portrayal of aging, of the vulnerability of the aging characters and of the pressures Woody's aging put on his wife and this two son, was having an emotional impact on me.

I wasn't tearing up and I didn't really know how I was being physically affected by the movie's emotional impact. 

Then I found out. 

At some point about three quarters of the way through the movie, I had to pause it and go to the bathroom. 

I tried to rise out of my chair, but my legs weren't working.

That's where the movie's emotional impact struck me. 

In my legs.

They shook. 

My knees knocked against each other. 

I wobbled. 

I kept myself from falling and gave myself a minute or two to steady myself.

I made it to the bathroom, sat down again in my chair, took several steady breaths, and watched the movie to its end. 

I loved it. 

2. Woody's story was very much on my mind as I entered the Elks dining hall and took the seat Ed had saved for me at a table with Nancy, Cindy, Tim, and Jake. 

It was burger night at the Elks and the current situation on every one's mind  was the local flooding, road closures, and difficulties people were facing. 

We also talked about the number of local people five to twenty-five or so years older than us who have died over the last year. I didn't know quite a few of them but listened as my table mates made connections between these different people and who they were related to, especially who their kids are. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our burgers and topped off our time together by seizing a table at The Lounge and continuing to yak about all kinds of things. 

3. Back home, I decided to let another movie take me deeper into the experience of growing old. 

This month, the Criterion Channel is featuring a short thirty-nine minute documentary, directed by Nathan Silver, entitled, Carol and Joy, a filmed conversation with Carol Kane and her mother Joy. The movie focuses almost exclusively on Joy. She is ninety-eight years old. She and Carol live together in a cozy sunlit apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Joy gives voice lessons in her apartment, plays a lovely piano, and has two pianos in her apartment so that she and her piano duet partner can make music together. 

Joy also has a comprehensive memory of the span of her life and her accounts of growing up, yearning for independence, and achieving it in mid-life are fascinating, making it, for me, a most satisfying and stimulating short film.