FILMS
Unbroken horizons in the US; underwater love in Berlin; undying dreams with Terry Gilliam; and more…
NOMADLAND Chloé Zhao will soon have a blockbuster hit on her hands with the Marvel superhero film Eternals. Let’s hope that it does extremely well, so that it enables the Beijing-born filmmaker to continue making the kind of insightful realist pictures she’s sublimely good at, such as 2017’s The Rider and now Nomadland, for which Zhao was recently crowned Best Director at the 2021 Golden Globes. The Rider was a powerfully spare drama about the South Dakota rodeo world; Nomadland explores similar terrain, again working with non-professionals to explore a largely unseen dimension of contemporary American life.
This time, however, Zhao has a wellknown lead, Frances McDormand. She plays Fern, from a Nevada town that has effectively shut down along with its gypsum plant. Fern sells her possessions, buys a van and joins the multitude of Americans, many of them similarly dispossessed, who travel the nation in search of work.
En route, Fern crosses trails with a man named David (the other well-known face, David Strathairn, always a welcome screen presence), as well as with two characterful women, Linda May and Swankie, who both play themselves, as do most of the people we meet here. Another of those real-life figures is Bob Wells, a guru of the new nomadic lifestyle, who holds desert get-togethers that offer community and help novices learn the ropes. It’s one such meet that provides Fern’s lifeline to a whole new kind of independence.