Cinema Without Borders: Child’s play—Omaha

Cole Webley’s debut feature film Omaha begins with a question. A young dad (John Magaro) asks his kids Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and Charlie (Wyatt Solis) what they’d take with them if the house caught fire and they were forced to run away as fast as possible. The pet Golden Retriever Rex and a picture of the mother is the answer. And, with that, the recent loss of this family gets divulged to the audience early on.

It also defines the emotional tenor of the film—restrained but packing a wallop, understated but marked with a rare depth. In fact, when it comes to filmmaking, Webley appears to believe that less is more and uses it effectively on screen. The same holds true for Robert Machoian’s writing. A simple, wisp of a story, brimming over with feelings but devoid of melodrama; a slow and steady sense of narrative progression without major twists and turns, but marked by a gradual yet defined build-up of desperation and performances that say a lot with a twitch of the face than through words. Immensely moving yet never manipulative, Omaha had its world premiere in the US Dramatic Competition section at the Sundance Film Festival. A finely realised quintessential American indie that somehow went under the radar. In the stillness of the morning, Ella and Charlie get woken up for a seemingly unplanned road trip across America. The takeover notice on the door and the Sheriff outside portend the continuing bad times for the dad and the oblivious kids. Things grow more and more ominous and it’s for a puzzled Ella to soon realise that this adventure on the road to Nebraska is not what it seems like. The promise of fun could be hiding something unpleasant and life-altering. Why is the dog not being given its own food, she argues, not realising that their days with it might be numbered.

Between the “poop vs boogers” game of Charlie, the uneasiness and despair of the father and the tiredness of Ella, is the writing on the wall—we might want a lot of things but life doesn’t always turn out the way we may have planned it. The viewer can figure from afar that the fate of the children might be the same as that of the dog but when the moment of reckoning arrives for the family, it leaves one broken to the core. The love and longing, loss and pain behind the Safe Haven laws couldn’t have been examined in a more devastating yet humane manner. The socio-economic realities and the concomitant struggles that come to mould and alter the personal, familial dynamics. The fact that sometimes love could be all about leaving behind someone you hold very dear.

There’s something unconcealed about the vulnerabilities of the three in the family, they wear it on their very being. It makes you care all the more for them. It’s all because of the trio that powers the characters. Magaro, Belle Wright and Solis make for a lived-in family, ever so real and intimate. With the antics of the young Solis in the background, it’s the glances exchanged between Magaro and Belle Wright that say it all. Magaro is all despair coiled and internalised. The soul of the film shines through in Belle Wright's eyes and the questioning yet understanding, innocent yet aware gaze. One of the best performances of the year so far, and astonishingly mature at that, for her age.