Nomadland (2020)
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Nomadland Movie Review
Nomadland is a 2020 western drama film directed by Chloe Zhao and starring Frances McDormand. It’s far from a great movie.
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“We be the bitches of the badlands“
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A woman embarks on a journey through the American West after losing everything during the recession. She joins other nomads and experiences life on the move. When the film started, I thought I was in for something truly special as the beginning is quite strong and the first scenes with the nomads were wonderful. But quickly the movie lost its steam and it actually became very dull to be honest.
And that brings me to Chloe Zhao. I really, strongly dislike this director. I know that many are obsessed with her works right now, but for me her direction is very off-putting. Yes, this movie is at least better than that slugfest ‘The Rider’, which was even more boring and lifeless. Still though, this one is also just okay with the second half being particularly uninteresting.
Zhao has the tendency to make movies that are half-documentaries in approach, and I personally despise that. If you want to make a documentary, just go out and make it, but do not mix the two together as it doesn’t work for me in the slightest. She employed real-life nomads and only McDormand is a real actress, but that mixture felt odd, strange and unappealing.
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Even worse is her tendency to make a non-narrative film out of anything that she touches. Many critics are gushing about her style in that regard, but I personally hate it. When I watch a feature film, I want to see a strong narrative. I don’t want to see a bunch of conversations and great shots and natural landscapes and that is pretty much what we have here. There is almost nothing thematically speaking nor do we get any arc or any real character development. It’s just a string of discussions tied by a collection of documentary-like scenes of nature.
Where Nomadland shines is in the cinematography. It’s truly amazing, there is no denying that. In fact, this is the only aspect of the movie that I genuinely loved, but even that couldn’t keep me engaged in the second half where I thoroughly lost my interest in the film as it became too repetitive, one-note and tedious.
But going back to the photography, the scenes of birds, rocks, the sky and especially a couple of driving scenes were just breathtaking. It’s not only lovely to look at and tender, but also accompanied by such a great, moving score. It’s an audio-visual treat, that’s for sure.
As for Frances McDormand, this is not ‘Three Billboards’ for her, not even close. I know that the two roles are vastly different, but somehow she seemed the same to me, and although good, I never found her particularly amazing. I know that she went through all of this work by living like a nomad basically, but it was all for nothing as the character herself is really uninteresting and badly developed. Others fare even worse. They are a fleeting presence, which is a point that the movie makes, but still I wanted at least for some of them to be somewhat memorable.
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” Nomadland “- pretentious, post hippy-new-agy,cumbaya -fest, a waste of serious talent, pseudo intellectual and the worst thing a film can be…boring. I can visualize Zhao directing McDormand; stare off across the vista and look wistful… now stare off across the vista and look forlorn…now stare off across the vista and look troubled…
The non actor vs. ‘A list’ actor docu/dreary drama/ travelogue mash up is unsettling and fails miserably. The white washing of marginalized seniors living out of their vehicles becomes the fulfillment of the Woodstock Nation, ” we are all in this together, let’s get our lawn chairs out and sit around the campfire” ethos. A fringe community of vagabonds without the darker element of humanity scraping along beside them is a pipe dream. Fern’s sense of loss of her lower middle class life and almost violent rejection of her sister’s slightly upper middle class life is hardly to her credit. Her so called journey of discovery leads her from anger and self pity to self pity and anger.
Yes, the cinematography is gorgeous but lengthy shots of her driving her beat up van through the American landscape does nothing to enhance the scenery.
Also, just about devoid of humor, something that even life at it’s lowest ebb is not.
A miss and a mess.
Bravo! Couldn’t have said it better myself. Glad to see that somebody agrees that it’s an overrated mess of a movie that is pretentious without being sophisticated at all.