p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n
The quietly affecting indie drama \u201cOmaha,\u201d from director Cole Webley, comes with a child\u2019s smiley face drawn in that \u201cO,\u201d even as the opening scene before that title card suggests anything but a family trip built around pleasure.<\/p>\n
As the soft morning light hits a flat, rural, unnamed town somewhere in the West, John Magaro\u2019s Martin carries his sleeping 6-year-old, Charlie (Wyatt Solis), to their Toyota wagon, then wakes up his 9-year-old, Ella (Molly Belle Wright), so she can put together some things and corral their dog Rex. Our first clue that this leave-taking lies somewhere between planned and spontaneous is in Martin\u2019s gently charged response in answer to his daughter\u2019s initial confusion: What would you take if the house were on fire?<\/p>\n
Nothing is ablaze, of course, but a woman from the sheriff\u2019s department is outside, monitoring this early departure, asking questions of Martin that we can\u2019t hear, yet not stopping his wish to drive off quickly. Ella, whose innocent, concerned face shows an interest in reading her father\u2019s moods, has picked up that a new horizon isn\u2019t entirely lamentable. Besides, there\u2019s a rousing singalong to \u201cMony Mony\u201d in the car (a song we gather was enjoyed greatly when their mom was alive), Charlie\u2019s in goofy spirits and, at the gas station, Dad buys a kite for when they hit Utah\u2019s salt flats. Fun has to be built into road trips, no?<\/p>\n
But under the big open skies and cramped spaces of their eastward journey in a faulty car, traveling between what we glean is a tough past and a hoped-for future, we know something\u2019s off. And it\u2019s that emotional space \u2014 how Martin\u2019s faraway stare and his attentiveness to his kids\u2019 comfort becomes a growing concern \u2014 where Webley\u2019s feature debut wants us: empathetic yet alert. As \u201cOmaha\u201d reveals itself with each stop along the I-80, you may be reminded of the acclaimed father-daughter feature \u201cAftersun\u201d from a handful of years ago: a vacation story that seeded its own mysteries of hardship inside a recognizable pocket of unconditional love.<\/p>\n
But Robert Machoian\u2019s spare screenplay is built around its own nexus of hurt, togetherness and struggle, and as it rolls along, your faith in the security of a tight-knit bond is routinely tested by the storm clouds in Martin\u2019s face. Magaro (\u201cPast Lives,\u201d<\/a> \u201cFirst Cow\u201d<\/a>), a chameleonic actor, has always borne an authenticity that naturally draws focus, but \u201cOmaha\u201d makes stellar use of how good he is with characters who push back against the camera\u2019s ability to penetrate.<\/p>\n Webley, through the intimate lens of Paul Meyers\u2019 sure-footed cinematography, mostly sticks to Ella\u2019s perspective \u2014 especially when we aren\u2019t privy to some of Martin\u2019s more solo moments, and can only guess at what\u2019s going on. But he lets Magaro\u2019s simmering fragility be a real presence: the sputtering glow of someone afraid to be the protagonist of his own story.<\/p>\n While not exactly winding down its tenseness, \u201cOmaha\u201d exits with some explanatory text about the origins of its narrative that will punctuate your sadness with shocks. (It makes you wonder if what you\u2019ve just seen was more of a feature-length PSA than movie.) But the jolt is brief. As the memory of it washes back over you, \u201cOmaha\u201d lingers, like a devastating short story \u2014 devastating because it\u2019s about a pained father for whom the road ahead only seems to get narrower.<\/p>\n ‘Omaha’<\/p>\n Rated: PG-13, for thematic material<\/p>\n Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes<\/p>\n Playing: Opens Friday, May 1 at Landmark\u2019s Nuart Theatre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> The quietly affecting indie drama \u201cOmaha,\u201d from director Cole Webley, comes with a child\u2019s smiley face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[6906,100340,267988,267987,88,8329,19911,267986,16693,206,25924,899,2862,193,36453,267990,267989],"class_list":["post-617928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-car","tag-charlie","tag-concerned-face","tag-ella","tag-entertainment","tag-father","tag-hurt","tag-john-magaro","tag-martin","tag-movies","tag-omaha","tag-review","tag-road","tag-space","tag-togetherness","tag-unconditional-love","tag-webley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}