A prescient and earthly endeavor into the hearts of people uncovering why they live and how they choose to look for it.
From Fox Searchlight and Chloé Zhao, the director of The Rider and the upcoming Eternals, comes a soon to be Best Picture nominee, Nomadland. Frances McDormand stars as Fern, a van-dwelling nomad who lost everything in the Great Recession and ventures across the Western United States trying to keep herself together. Chloé Zhao solidifies herself as an artistic force with a movie perfectly designed to become the next “modern classic”.
The beauty of Nomadland is buried beneath the peaks and deep within the valleys of the West. This is channeled by Frances McDormand’s most powerful performance of her career. After winning the Oscar for her rigid performance in Three Billboards, wondering what direction she would go in next was enticing. Outside of making her obvious cameos in a Coen Bros. movie, I don’t think anyone could have predicted this. A down to Earth, somber person that is the total opposite of her role in Three Billboards. We’ve known that she’s been one of the best actresses for a few decades with incredible range, but very few words can properly describe her performance in Nomadland. So much is vocalized through her silent meanderings and adventures throughout the expansive backdrops of the American West. The way in which she exists in relation to the environment and people around her feels incredibly personal and empathetic. There is a harrowing truth to the exterior of the film that harbors a growing distance in relationships as a means to explore what has been lost on the inside. There is a constant feeling of genuine empathy and optimism for the people involved in this story, and the fact that most of the cast is played by non-actors is telling.
Zhao creates such a powerful relationship between the viewer and the screen by letting people exist as they are. There isn’t some forced dramatic climax that’ll have us reaching for a tissue, or a scene of someone wallowing in their grief as they coil on the ground and reach up to the sky in a full, clichéd exertion of pain. Instead people share their stories of grief and how they found a way to be at peace with themselves. It’s a tranquil experience that allows us a moment to evaluate how these people, typically older in age, are transitioning into a world where it is increasingly difficult to be yourself. So much of their joy in this movie comes from sharing their stories or the thrill of being a part of something so meaningful to them. I can’t recall a movie that recently allowed the people in the story to simply be themselves without manufacturing drama for them. The way Zhao allows Fern to walk her path is prescient and incredibly moving. It’s relatively plotless, but the restrictions of plot in this type of story allow the people within it to transcend what we typically perceive as a movie trying to emotionally move us. It’s incredibly admirable and the textures of it certifiably rich.
When we look at the behind-the-scenes of the film and take into account Zhao’s decisions to continue on her career path, I’ve found there to be a concerning approach to how we assess artists. There have been plenty of times in recent memory where a film-maker isn’t the right fit for a story. Kathryn Bigelow on Detroit, Tom Hooper on The Danish Girl, or Peter Farrelly on Green Book are great examples of people who misunderstand their role within those stories. They may try to make them with good intentions for specific audiences, but there isn’t a truth to it that would have been spoken had another film-maker had their chance to explore those characters in their world. I immediately think of Lingua Franca as a recent movie made by the right person. I saw that movie within 24 hours of Nomadland, so that’s probably why I’m drawn to it, but it begins to develop questions about the outside realities of the movie, and how it influences the inner design of them. Chloé Zhao isn’t someone who may have walked in every footstep that Fern embodies. Frances McDormand probably hasn’t spent a day in her successful career worrying about financial income. That doesn’t nullify what they’ve brought to life with Nomadland.
Which is a story that greatly understands the myths of the American West and how to deconstruct it.
For a long time the West has been a place where people go to free themselves from the rural shackles of the East. It’s always been spoken of as land with more opportunity and distinct freedoms not found anywhere else in the country. It’s a land of expansive horizons, gorgeous sunsets, breathing with new, exciting life in every desert or snowy tundra. What isn’t prophesied or emboldened in myth about the American West is the people that inhabit it. What is so brilliant about Nomadland is how it harnesses the vastness of space and promises to enrich the people in the story. Chloé Zhao manages to completely deconstruct the myth of the American West by utilizing the people in those lands to explore how inescapable real emotions and struggles are. As mentioned previously, Zhao and McDormand may not have experienced that livelihood, but it is framed through the lens of having a willingness to understand it by optimizing how those people feel. There is zero pity for any of these people just because they don’t fit into the cookie cutter mold of living a life within societal norms and structures. It’s so readily apparent by Fern’s graceful walks and discussions with people who have lost so much but found peace in themselves because of how they connect with the world.
Like all great myths, fables, folktales, there is something respectively tragic about each of them. Myths especially, are exactly that, false beliefs. Zhao completely disrupts this mindset that the American West is a land full of tangibles that’ll heal anyone trying to escape any form of debt emotionally or financially. It’s a beautiful land with so many sights to see, points of interest to tour, places to eat, unique opportunities, but those things don’t heal us. As far as I can tell, the only way to gain any semblance of “healing” in this story (if in search of any at all), is to have conversations with people and what we can learn from them. Which is what I believe Zhao molds as the heart of Nomadland. Many movies clearly define their answers and tell us how to emotionally grapple with what they're trying to say, Nomadland isn’t one of those movies. As Fern continues forward in search of understanding, she never crosses a final conclusion, because the conclusions are to be drawn by us. We have subliminal conversations with a movie every time, and Nomadland is a movie that we communicate with to help us understand more about ourselves. We observe people that have helped define the West, and there’s a lesson about how we spend our days travelling our own paths, our own land, in hope of answering our own “whys”. I find that incredibly emotional and very powerful when a movie has the ability to quietly unearth questions for me to answer that are incomparable to someone else’s.
Chloé Zhao has made a masterpiece. A movie so genuine and outreaching to understand people who have gone unnoticed for so long. The discourse being produced this weekend over the film and it’s “actual” merits brings up many questions outside of the film. When we begin to assess film-makers, actors, any type of storyteller in a way that brings into question how they may “actually” feel about a topic or story because of their capital growth, is concerning. Especially when I feel you can easily see the differences in a film-maker who has a true perspective with an intent to educate through goodwill. There’s an upcoming movie that is the prime example of someone telling a story with heavy material that is more interested in being “artsy” than genuinely empathetic, and I hope you’ll note it in comparison to this. Zhao and McDormand, as far as I understand, display an opportunity for us to hear and see a story that attaches itself to multiple stories. I don’t think we should be deciding or be unrealistically critical to implant an expectation on people who have the best interests in mind. Sure, it can be misguided like it was in Colin Trevorrow’s The Book of Henry, but if you look at that film and this one, it is stark how much Zhao cares about the material in the film. It’s never crude, pitiful, or sorrowful, it is so optimistic about people finding a way to live their best life during an unbelievably difficult time.
When necessary, there is always room to be critical, but I don’t think it’s our place as critics to try and vouch on behalf of people we probably know less about than the film-maker does, or the people being represented. Who are we to put words into the mouths of the people being represented? That’s not to void any critic who may relate in a respective capacity and feel they were misrepresented, but I feel we need to start reflecting more as critics on how far we go in being critical of something. Especially when it’s important to take into consideration how the people a movie is representing actually represents them. We might respond positively in light of someone feeling they were misrepresented, but we don’t need to go as far as trying to bludgeon a director’s career who is just starting to make a name for herself. It’s already hard enough as it is for women, let alone a woman of color, to make a movie that gets enough attention to be in the awards circuit, and now she’s, “in it for capital gain”, and, “not actually concerned with the people she’s representing”? Give me a break. Especially when it’s abundantly clear that she has so much empathy to share in comparison to directors who have clearly done so much worse in the modern era of film.