The fact that director Chloé Zhao‘s ‘Nomadland‘ is nominated for some of the most important categories Academy Awards and that it is even considered the main favorite for the best film of 2020 may have influenced my experience of watching this film. Don’t get me wrong. ‘Nomadland‘ is a beautiful and sensitive film, a combination of road movie, documentary and drama that tells a lot about America today, a film that I liked. However, its charm consists in simplicity and sincerity and there is no too much of a story in this film. It looks more like a European film, Agnès Varda‘s ‘Sans toit ni loi‘ (‘Vagabond‘) being the film that comes to my mind now as a term of comparison, than like an American production with a good chance of dominating the Academy Awards ceremony. Academy. It’s an anti-Academy movie. Maybe it’s exactly the nominations that make some (rather minor) minuses of the film that I might otherwise have ignored stand out.
The heroine of the film, Fern (the wonderfulFrances McDormand) is a widow and no longer has a house of her own. She defines herself as ‘houseless’ and not ‘homeless’, her game of words indicating that she considers the caravan in which she probably invested her last savings as her home and the roof under which she wants to spend the rest of her life, a mobile home that she uses to drive across America. She is not the only one who chooses this way of life. Same as Fern, who had gone through the tragedy of her husband’s illness and death and the ruin of the city built around a mining industry gone dry, there are plenty of other Americans who choose to live a nomadic life by traveling in their caravans on the roads of America, living close to nature and sustaining themselves from temporary and seasonal work. At one point another character tries to put this way of life into words by linking it to the historical epic of American heroes with their pioneering spirit, but Fern seems to reject this rhetoric. The reasons why she chooses this way of life are personal, although maybe not necessarily prosaic.
So we are dealing with a road movie, in which the spectators of the film accompany Fern for a year in her journey. This is the America of simple people, of ordinary life situations, of the nature that envelops and overwhelms. I hope that my association will be excused, but some of the situations in the film reminded me the movies featuring Borat, the hero of Sacha Baron Cohen. As there, we are dealing with ‘Deep America’ and its people, but the approaches are opposite. Cohen seeks (and sometimes provokes) farce and behavioural extremes, Chloé Zhao immerses herself in everyday life and brings to the film the humanity of those she meets. The use of non-professional actors, people who do not act in a film but live their own lives on screen, contributes enormously to the authenticity of the film. Joshua James Richards‘ cinematography constantly makes the connection between the characters and the social environment (I like the excellent scenes in the Amazon hangars) or the surrounding nature, which is sometimes spectacularly beautiful, other times cold and hostile. The music, belonging to the Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi, manages to be authentic, beautiful and expressive without ever capturing more attention than necessary. Frances McDormand, who succeeds in every new film in which she appears to give birth to another character, integrates here perfectly into the almost documentary style of the film. Her character being so consistent, I missed a more consistent narrative structure around. For more than two thirds of the film, the actress builds a complex, deep character that triggers empathy and makes us, spectator to ask questions. When the answers come, they seem too mundane. It is here that perhaps the director and screenwriter could have given up simplicity. Anyway, out of the films nominated this year that I’ve seen so far, ‘Nomadland‘ is my favorite. Let’s see if this film with an anti-Academy approach will convince the members of the Academy to award it any of the significant prizes.