Life is full of disappointments, struggles, beautiful moments, love and heartbreak. When you’re in poverty, anywhere in the world, those struggles are magnified — they lead to more mental health struggles and often times desperation. This doesn’t negate the love you may have for your family or for the people in your life, but it does make it harder to bear the responsibility of that love.
These themes are explored through a single father’s struggles in middle America in the new film Omaha. Channeling Wim Wenders’ road movies and the quiet devastation of Kelly Reichardt’s films, director Cole Webley weaves a tale that channels these struggles with an incredibly emotionally intelligent film about a father bringing his kids on a road trip to Omaha during the 2008 financial crisis. The screenplay was written by Robert Machoian, who also wrote and directed The Killing of Two Lovers.
John Magaro plays this role with so much depth that I found myself getting teary-eyed before the film even got into the rhythm of the story. Pulling off a quiet film that layers so much emotion without beating you over the head with score and exposition is no easy feat, but it’s the kind of film that I seek out — the ones that usually leave me with my jaw on the floor.
Omaha is both beautifully shot, while also recognizing the ugliness in a landscape and social contract that is deteriorating before our eyes, especially for those at the bottom rung of the income ladder. In that sense, the Midwest and Omaha are not only a destination but embody an idea about America. If our heartland can be the destination for so much heartbreak, what does that say about the emotional landscape of our country?
When I first heard about a film called Omaha, from someone who isn’t from here, I’m not going to lie — I got kind of annoyed. But this film captures a part of America that is generally ignored, a part of our society that you will not witness on social media or in most television shows and movies. This is the part of our society that doesn’t work, that leaves working people behind in our hyper-individualism and fetishization of “successful” people. This is not the America, or the Omaha, of the billionaires. This is the America that the billionaires pit against itself in the rush to gobble up more resources, pushing us toward a world without work and without safety nets.
No one wants to be in the situation that this family is in. We all want to be the family that gets to poke fun at each other at dinner and laugh, to fly kites on the salt flats, spend a day at the zoo, and give our children the magical experiences that they deserve. But alas, here this family is — and here too many people are.
