![]() At one point, her van breaks down and she has to take it in for repairs. It's not the last time Fern will have car trouble. Another of the movie's memorable real-life characters is a gruff but compassionate woman named Swankie, who helps Fern change a flat tire and scolds her for not having a spare. One of her new friends, Linda May, describes how crushing poverty almost led her to take her own life fortunately, the presence of her two dogs made her reconsider. ![]() It's hard to imagine another actor who could share the same spaces with them as casually as McDormand does, whether Fern is bubble-wrapping packages at an Amazon warehouse or mingling with other travelers in a crowded trailer park. The film sets Fern adrift among these real-life transient workers, several of whom were featured in Bruder's book, and who tell their stories again here. ![]() The journalist Jessica Bruder wrote about Empire and the larger phenomenon of modern-day American nomads in her 2017 book Nomadland, from which this movie was freely adapted. in a large van that will also be her home. Over the next year or so we'll follow as she takes on work wherever she can find it, driving across the U.S. We see Fern packing her things and leaving Empire behind. But in 2011, in the wake of a devastating global recession, the local gypsum mine shut down and Empire became a ghost town, displacing hundreds of residents in the process.Įmpire was a real place, but the main character in this movie is a fictional creation: She's a widow in her 60s named Fern, and she's played in a remarkable performance by Frances McDormand. As America contends with its divided identity, ‘Nomadland’ both captures the zeitgeist and embraces the fantasy of leaving it all behind for life on the road.Restless and tired of ordinary life, Fern (Frances McDormand) takes to the road in Nomadland.Ĭhloé Zhao's amazing new movie, Nomadland, begins with an elegy for Empire, Nev., one of those old-fashioned company towns that thrived during America's post-World War II manufacturing boom. Zhao embraces the paradox at the center of a story that both celebrates its character’s liberation and bemoans that sad state of affairs that put her on that track. IndieWire’s chief critic Eric Kohn named “Nomadland” the fourth best movie of 2020, writing, “The film develops an entrancing narrative about American alienation and the appeal of escaping society’s oppressive clutches. The safety of fiction filmmaking, in my opinion, actually pulls out a level of honesty and authenticity that I think would be impossible if this was a documentary purporting to truth.” Chloé really allows people to choose how they want to represent themselves. “You could see her listening to these individuals telling their stories, and then collaborating with them to fold their own narratives into the script. “You could watch her script adapt to the personalities and stories that came from those conversations,” Zhao’s directing assistant Hannah Peterson told IndieWire about the “Nomadland” creative process. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in Talks to Lead Chloé Zhao’s ‘Hamnet’ Zhao wrote the film’s script using Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century” as a guide, but she also made sure to fold in the real life stories of the nomads themselves. While the film also stars “Good Night, and Good Luck” Oscar nominee David Strathairn in a key supporting role, the majority of “Nomadland” finds McDormand acting opposite real modern-day nomads, including Linda May, Charlene Swankie, and Bob Wells. McDormand stars as Fern, a woman in her sixties who rebounds from losing everything in the Great Recession by journeying through the American West as a van-dwelling nomad. Starring two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand, the acclaimed drama won the Golden Lion at Venice and the People’s Choice Award at TIFF. I have to be excited by little things I discover along the way.” Zhao’s approach is just one reason the upcoming “ Nomadland” ranks among the best films of 2020. Someone once said to me that passion doesn’t sustain, but curiosity does. “I have to be in love with my subject matter and want to learn more about it. “I’m not the kind of filmmaker who just makes films,” Chloé Zhao told IndieWire earlier this year.
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