In the moving Sundance drama “Omaha,” the bedsheets are still warm when the life of a family is thrown into disarray on the morning they are mandated to vacate their home. The mother’s passing and the 2008 financial collapse contributed to the precariousness that’s put them in this predicament. Few belongings will accompany them on their road trip to an uncertain future.
In the driver seat of a barely functional car, a remarkably subdued John Magaro plays a widower and single father who, for most of the running time, is referred to simply as Dad. His perceptive 9-year-old daughter Ella (Molly Belle Wright) helps him push the moribund vehicle on the passenger side so it can start. From the look of it, they’ve done this plenty of times before, as the routine of a shared burden communicates the kids’ unconditional support for a parent desperately doing his best. Tucked in the back seat, Charlie (Wyatt Solis), the 6-year-old boy whose bed now lies empty, hugs Rex, the family’s well-behaved golden retriever. The kids have no clue where they’re going, and in truth, neither does Dad.
Equal parts heart-wrenching and luminous, “Omaha” shimmers with a startling truthfulness about two parallel points of view: a father who skips meals to ensure his children smile for whatever time they have together, and that of a young girl who can’t help but worry about her parent’s visible distress and what’s to come for her and her brother. Intimate in its scope, yet emotionally monumental, this debut feature by director Cole Webley, working from a screenplay by filmmaker Robert Machoian — whose “The Killing of Two Lovers” observes another father from middle America in crisis — resonates for how spontaneously the interactions seem to unfold, as if sparked by reality in front of the camera.
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The rich humanistic texture that makes “Omaha” feel so soulful and affecting lies partly in the small material details and how these expand one’s view of the characters’ temperament and personal histories. Among these, there’s a home-burned CD with a hand-drawn cover (it holds the voice of the kids’ mother), or the stack of books that Ella abruptly grabs when existing their house, a sign that she is an avid reader, which has likely influenced her sensibility and maturity. Similarly, Charlie’s growing collection of toy cars stolen from gas stations along the way both note his mischievous spirit and mark the miles traveled across vast landscapes.
Breathing cinematic panache into places and scenarios that one could easily deem commonplace, cinematographer Paul Meyers’ wraps the cross-country American odyssey with visual lyricism without stealing attention from the laughter and tears that propel it. A shot of fireworks as the family’s beater drives by, the immensity of the sky when Charlie and Ella fly a kite while dad ponders his decisions, and even an instance of the boy dancing carefree against the backdrop of an arid road brim with bittersweet wonder. The thoughtful composition of the images contrasting with the dynamic camera offset the filmmaker’s overreliance on catchy songs. By design, the soundtrack feels like the endless playlist needed on drives of this magnitude.
A film such as “Omaha” lives or dies on the quality of its young actors. Credit here goes both to the casting director and Webley’s work with Wright, who gives a superlative performance, one that feels imbued with deliberate choices from the character’s innermost fears and informed by the exchanges with her co-stars. The young actor astounds as she bridges innocence with a sense of impending dread. Ella and Dad often stare at one another with concern when the other person is too immersed in their thoughts to notice. This crossfire of looks reads so unrehearsed that when their gazes do meet, it feels charged with tension.
Meanwhile, what Magaro does in a nearly silent, utterly compelling turn is to convey the muted sorrow of a man pushed against the wall by a set of unfortunate circumstances, who refuses to ask for help. The impossibility of verbalizing that his resilience has reached its breaking point is painted on his weathered face even when he attempts to put on a genuine smile. It’s as if one can always see the preemptive regret and shame he carries about the drastic solution he’s chosen amid his dire financial woes.
In the middle of a scene unfolding inside the car or a room, Webley and editor Jai Shukla cut from the family’s exchanges to one of Meyers’ wide shots of what’s happening outside their troubled microcosm: the road with other cars and trucks on their way to their own destinations or an image of all the rooms in a hotel, each containing live experiences the viewer won’t be made privy to. There’s an interesting effect in this approach. For one, it suggests that this family is one among millions of cases like theirs, and it visually manifests the notion that no one knows what another person is going through at any given moment.
Life, at is most inconspicuously precious, is built from truck-stop ice creams, sing-alongs to a treasured tune and underwater shenanigans at a budget hotel pool, not from grand gestures. In turn, human existence is at its most agonizingly devastating not in the big picture of an ostentatious catastrophe occurs, but in the individual tragedies that go unnoticed every day. When for some the world keeps spinning, for others it’s crumbling. A humble marvel, “Omaha” introduces a filmmaker with a privileged sensibility to translate these opposing forces into a tapestry of scenes imbued with loving compassion for the characters experiencing them.