Nomadland: A Step Forward or Backward?
With an overwhelmingly positive response from critics, Nomadland is likely already on your watchlist (if you haven’t already seen it). The film follows the life of a woman who, following the collapse of her rural town in Nevada due to the Great Recession, embarks on a journey as a van-dwelling widow. Frances McDormand, alongside real nomads Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells, gives a calm but powerful performance as the 60-something-year-old nomad named Fern traversing the American West.
Hearing about this film during its post-production phases was delightful. I couldn’t wait to see the meditative arthouse film starring my actual mother Frances McDormand. My high expectations subsided upon an initial Letterboxd peruse shortly before viewing. Admittedly, Nomadland is not at all what I had thought it would be, and it didn’t compare to either of my expectations––good or bad.
One of its strengths is its absolutely mesmerizing nature. Never before had a “slow burn” (although I’m not quite satisfied with ascribing that term to this film) kept me on the edge of my seat, with all my attention on the story, how characters interacted with each other, and what it all meant, throughout its runtime. Really, there was never a dull moment, despite the film being a very calming narrative experience. The writing, the visuals, and performances all weaved together paint a beautiful portrait of nomad life. Unfortunately, this may actually be what resulted in some pushback from viewers.
This serenity captured in the film could also be interpreted as a glamorization of houselessness and socioeconomic insecurity. In a popular Letterboxd review with more than 900 likes, @comrade_yui absolutely annihilates the feature, calling it “a touristic faux-docudrama vehicle for the most banal form of misery porn, presenting itself with all the deliberately-adorned signifiers of ‘authenticity’ and ‘deeply-felt emotion’ that endear this insidious genre of film to a dishwater-dull critical audience desperate to see any portrait of society that vaguely acknowledges that weird and esoteric concept known as ‘economic hardship’.”
Although these choice words may seem crueler than necessary, the reviewer brought up many relevant points and hypocrisies of the film, and there’s a long history of this sort of accusation. If film art must be beautiful, can poverty be represented on the silver screen without romanticizing, infantilizing, or embracing it? I would argue that such a thing is possible. The Florida Project (2017) and Minding the Gap (2018) are just two examples of masterful pieces that tread this line gracefully and prove that this subject can be portrayed tactfully.
The nonfiction source material that the film was based on, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, is overtly political, criticizing current economic systems with contemporary discontent. The book opens with the line: “The capitalists don’t want anyone living off their economic grid,” yet even slightly anti-capitalistic sentiments are nowhere to be found in the film. More horrifyingly, Fern emphasizes her love for her job at Amazon, which is known to exploit its workers and generally spread capitalistic terror far and wide.
Frankly, the overwhelming support from well-off film bros and Hollywood bigshots marking Nomadland as the woke portrayal of poorness that we all needed is pretty icky, especially during a pandemic and economic crisis. It’s the cinematic equivalent of proclaiming that you’re “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” (which by the way means absolutely nothing except that you uphold systems of oppression because it’s convenient and are probably very racist) and fits well with the current trend of performative activism.
With that being said, Nomadland has still received praise from official critics and most Letterboxd users alike. Critics have cited the film as an inspiration for women filmmakers, making waves with an Asian woman director as an Oscar-frontrunner.
In response to anti-Asian hate crimes, Zhao stated, “We all just have to learn. Maybe we need to be a bit more compassionate to ourselves. I sometimes feel like people with so much hate, maybe they just hate themselves, and I think an understanding and trying to see the world from the other person’s perspective is the only way we can survive as a species” (Zhao, South China Morning Post).
This empathy from Zhao is authentic. Throughout the film, viewers can tell that real nomad subjects and their stories are treated with care and deep emotion.
Receiving six Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Nomadland is absolutely sweeping this awards season. The film is even one of the two record-breaking Oscar nominations for Best Director. For the first time ever, two women filmmakers (Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman; Chloé Zhao, Nomadland) received Best Director nominations in the same year, joining only five women nominated in the category ever. Although this is an incredible feat, it is still shocking that this slightly more diverse representation has taken so long to come about. It functions as another addition to the long list of evidence of how non inclusive the Oscars––and the film industry––truly are.
Nomadland is now streaming on Hulu, so go form your own opinion!
Sources:
@comrade_yui. Review of Nomadland, by Chloé Zhao. Letterboxd, 8 January 2021.
https://letterboxd.com/comrade_yui/film/nomadland/
Zhao, Chloé. Interviewed by James Mottram for South China Morning Post, 30 March 2021, https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3127574/chloe-zhao-nomadlands-feminist-qualities-her-hope-make