Alexander Payne has built a unique career exploring life’s comedy and tragedy through indelible three-dimensional everymen and women. Following his 2011 adaptation of Kaui Hart Hemming’s novel The Descendants, Payne does not disappoint with Nebraska, a family road comedy.

After receiving notice of a million-dollar sweepstakes prize, irascible septuagenarian Woody (Bruce Dern) is determined to collect his winnings in person rather than trust the mail. Police officers rescue Woody on the highway while he tries to shuffle the 750-mile journey from Billings, Montana to Nebraska on foot. His youngest son David (Will Forte), an aimless, lovelorn, salesman, retrieves him from police custody. Meanwhile, Woody’s wife, razor tongued Kate (June Squibb), is at her wits end, convinced her husband’s going senile, and, peeved at putting up with an alcoholic husband for decades, she’s ready to put him in a home. Their embittered eldest son Ross (Bob Odenkirk), an ambitious television news anchor, agrees with her.

Full of hope, Woody absconds again, and David agrees to drive him to Nebraska to prove he did not win the jackpot. Despite David’s frustration and inability to communicate with his father, this trip is also his last chance to connect. As father and son steer into a vanishing Midwest on the trail of a dubious fortune, Woody takes every opportunity to have a drink. After a drunken fall derails their schedule, David is forced to detour to visit family in their hometown of Hawthorne, where word of Woody’s fortune has spread fast. While David plays it down, Woody is hailed a returning hero. Tensions rise as the vultures circle and David is confronted by his parents’ past. But when Kate and Ross join them for a reunion of their extended family, the journey becomes a cathartic and comic family odyssey.

After a run of writing adaptations, Payne puts down the pen and directs an original script by Bob Nelson, a former sketch writer for a local Seattle TV show. Originally written as a sample to get a television gig, the tight script has an economy of set up that enables the characters to shine with details of their roots based on Nelson’s own experience.

Just as Jack Nicholson gave one of his greatest performances for Payne in About Schmidt, Dern is wonderful as taciturn Woody. He balances Woody’s vulnerability and determination, confusion and clarity adroitly. Will Forte plays David, the kindhearted, straight man with a subtlety that has not been afforded him in his previous comedy roles. June Squibb, who previously appeared in About Schmidt, is hilarious as feisty, irrepressible matriarch Kate. Bob Odenkirk, known for his iconic role as criminal lawyer Saul Goodman in the acclaimed Breaking Bad, pares down his performance to play go-getter Ross, who remains resentful of Woody’s paternal inadequacies.

After Woody returns toothless and paralytic from a drinking binge, David helps him retrace his steps in search of his dentures. On a dark and desolate train track, the pair cut a pathetic presence digging in the dirt, but Payne spins the scene from heartbreak to hilarity and reveals Woody’s still got a spark and the will to make amends. This is Payne’s power in scene after scene. Returning to Hawthorne, the gloriously uncensored Kate immediately wants to visit the graveyard. While reviewing the deceased, she dishes the dirt on old friends, rivals, love interests, and flashes her knickers at a notoriously boring, failed suitor while inviting him to “See what you could have had.”

Set in Payne’s home state, Nebraska captures the beauty of the expansive landscape and the details of fading small-town America. Shot in black and white widescreen, the monochrome cinematography underscores the film’s contrasting comedy and tragedy. The economy of Payne’s storytelling, with Woody lumbering into the frame or down a highway, enables the characters and the relationships of the fractured family to develop effortlessly. What starts out as a quixotic quest for a million dollars becomes a search for something more important to father and son—something akin to unspoken forgiveness. Payne questions the strength of family bonds, unravels family riddles, and confronts aging and the shifting balances of family dynamics.

Payne’s compassionate and dignified portrayal of his characters, warts and all, is universally recognizable. Nebraska is a beautiful story told with wit, insight, and a lot of tenderness. Deeply moving and extremely funny, it’s a life affirming film and a must-see.