Tina Kakadelis
Ah, the great American road trip. Why fly anywhere when you can elongate the journey if you travel by car? The love for a road trip can be traced back to America’s immense reliance on cars, the sheer size of the country, and the magic of Route 66. Not all road trips, though, are for fun. Some are out of necessity, a cheaper means of travel for families in the midst of financial struggle. Such is the case for the family at the heart of Cole Webley’s Omaha. Written by Robert Machoian, who initially conceived the film in 2008, Omaha is about a family in crisis and the lengths a parent will go to care for their kids.
When we meet the family, the father, known only as Dad (John Magaro), is waking his kids up. He asks them to pack the things they would miss most if they couldn’t come back home again. The younger sibling, Charlie (Wyatt Solis) thinks little of it and readily starts packing, while older sister Ella (Molly Belle Wright) can sense there’s something her dad isn’t telling her. When the family is loaded up in the car, Dad informs the kids that they’re driving to Omaha. He hasn’t given them any information about what awaits them in Omaha, but he promises it’s a new chapter.
Machoian’s script primarily takes Ella’s point of view. She may be the older sibling, but she’s only about nine years old. Ella is aware that something bad has happened to her father, but she doesn’t have the words or the understanding of what he’s dealing with. Adult viewers will recognize the telltale signs of the Great Recession of the early 2000s. The family is leaving because their house has been foreclosed on and it seems Dad has lost his job as well. His wife recently passed away, and he’s now the sole provider for their children at a time when the American economy is at a low point.
Wright’s performance as Ella is nothing short of astounding. She has the youthful optimism that everything will be okay, but is also learning that she could be wrong about that. Throughout the roadtrip, Ella glimpses cracks in her father’s attempts to stay positive. She’s a bundle of nerves who is so afraid, and the one person she could look to to soothe those concerns is adamant that things will be alright. The balance Wright must find in her performance, of trust and fear, is quite difficult. It’s the glue that holds Omaha together, as she splits the difference between Charlie and Dad. Charlie is going with the flow, with no sense of danger, despite the red flags around him. Dad is the only one who knows the true purpose of the trip.
Omaha takes place almost entirely on the road to Nebraska. It’s a road trip flick in the truest sense of the genre, and director Webley manages to capture the way the car turns into an ecosystem of its own. For the duration of this journey, the inside of the car becomes the family’s entire world. Time feels different, and there’s a sense of loneliness, yet togetherness. They’re isolated from the world, yet experiencing it in an up-close way. Along the way, the family stops to fly kites in the salt flats of Utah. It’s a stunning sequence that’s tinged with sadness, even as it loudly expresses joy. A road trip is inherently fleeting, and moments like this one have to end because there are still so many hours to travel.
Machoian’s script and Webley’s direction show a gentle reverence for the smallness of life. Both recognize that the world can be contained within a moving vehicle, and how fragile that experience can be. The film’s final moments are harrowing, and end title cards provide an explanation as to how this family got to this moment. For all its gentleness, these final scenes add a thorniness to Omaha that captures the time and place it’s set in. It’s not easy to make a decision like this one, but Omaha empathetically explains how anyone could reach this point.
