Nomadland
SearchlightNomadland has had awards buzz surrounding it ever since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Since then, word of mouth has spread and it’s easily been one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Chloé Zhao directs Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman who has left her home in order to travel in a van around the American West.
What some people may be surprised to learn is that Nomadland is adapted from a non-fiction book which chronicles the lives of people who have become nomads after being affected by the Great Recession. Zhao takes her source material seriously and, other than McDormand and David Strathairn, the majority of the cast is made up of real life nomads. Zhao is clearly channeling her directorial style from The Rider and this may continue to be a theme across her work: the best way for her to tell a story is to have real life people playing versions of themselves.
Of course, there are risks to this. Putting a camera in the midst of a real world could easily be jarring for non actors and result in stiff performances, despite them playing themselves. Alternately, there is the chance of everything coming off as a dishonest documentary. Despite this, Zhao finds real talent within her choice of characters and many of them feel at ease on camera. The only drawback with this is actually the casting of McDormand. McDormand holds her own but, in some scenes that require her to act alongside some of the non-actors, it becomes obvious there is an element of make believe to this. One such example sees McDormand cracking a joke to her companion about being ‘the bitches of the badlands’, resulting in a moment that seems improvised coming off as terribly awkward.
On her own, McDormand is wonderful. It’s the quiet, lonely moments that affect the most and give a sense of who Fern is, with that theme of loneliness tacitly spiralling out across the whole movie. Nothing ever feels forced or obvious in terms of what the point of this story is – Zhao manages to capture it in an unassuming manner with the story playing out at exactly the pace it needs to.
If anything is to be taken away and praised from Nomadland, it is Zhao. She continues to prove herself an avid storyteller, choosing narratives that would typically be overlooked. Her unique style has been honed here and she has clearly learned a few lessons since shooting The Rider. How her distinct voice will permeate into the big budget blockbuster, The Eternals, later in the year, will be very interesting to see.