NB Reviews: "Nomadland"

I'm a bit of a film buff, to say the least. Every year, I try to watch every single Academy Award for Best Picture nominee. Including the boring ones meant to try and get George Clooney or Glen Close a nomination. Especially those ones. And I found the nominees this year so interesting that I'd like to talk about each one of them. So, I'll be reviewing all 8 in the lead up to Oscar night. In order from worst to best (in my personal opinion).

Don't take my ranking as an attack on these films. I thought that the selection was excellent and I absolutely adore most of them. Seven out of eight of them. So, let's talk about Nomadland (Directed by Chloé Zhao).

Nomadland is about...poverty, I guess. That would seem to be the attempted theme. Francis McDormand's Fern definitely has money troubles. That's a subplot in places when the film isn't just acting as "We got this beloved actress to go have fun in some national parks. Watch her vacation footage." She works a series of dead end jobs and doesn't have money to fix the van. But it doesn't really say a lot about that poverty. In fact, if it says anything, it might actively be harmful. Fern is offered safety nets to not have to live this lifestyle multiple times...which is just not the reality for most people in poverty. And each time she's offered a safety net, she refuses it without question. Out of pride.

Well, maybe it's about grief, then. Fern's husband is dead and that certainly makes her sad. The film decides to end on her returning to the house she shared with him for most of her life, looking around before leaving it behind, symbolically able to move on finally. If I had any idea who Fern was as a person, I'd probably really feel something during that.

That's the problem, though. We are given so little insight into Fern as a person. She's got a bit of a fun, mid-western mom energy at times. She has grief. Everything else is kind of a question mark. I feel like we're supposed to gain some insight into her when it's revealed that, despite the working class life she leads, her family is very rich. But instead I'm just left thinking "Okay, Chloé Zhao. I also like Five Easy Pieces." Obviously, this film is going for an intense realism so it wanted to shy away from big ACTING moments and keep things more subdued. But McDormand's performance transcends subdued and reaches nonexistent.

I feel like I'm being a bit mean to this film. It's certainly not the worst thing in the world. But there's a lot of time for mean thoughts to crystallize when you watch almost nothing happen for 108 minutes. This film is heavily critically praised, though. So I should at least try to understand why and talk about a cool aspect of it.

I thought that the use of a hybrid format was interesting. Outside of Fern and David, every actor in this piece is an actual person in van dwelling culture. There's a significant portion of documentary at play here as we watch these real-life people talk about themselves and why they're part of the culture. Usually this is done in a documentary-style talking head shot with Fern implicitly being right off screen listening to them. That's a really cool and innovative trick...that I first saw in 2009's Up in the Air.

I know that this film is the front runner currently and will likely go home with all sorts of Oscar gold. Zhao will probably get best director and McDormand will probably win her third time for Best Leading Actress. Those outcomes are so favored right now that it's useless to rage against them. But I can dream.

At least it looks like Frances McDormand had fun at some of these places. She deserves it for all of the better movies she's been in.

Onwards to all the stuff I actually like!