Through a Filter Softly: Chloé Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’ (2020) — On Disney+ Hotstar
Film Analysis in 10 Slides
Facebook link for this Film Analysis in 10 Slides
Instagram link for this Film Analysis in 10 Slides
VENICE & OSCAR AWARDS WINNER
Nomadland won the Golden Lion at Venice for Best Film and Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress for Frances McDormand.
“NOMADLAND’ THE BOOK
This road film is based on the revelatory non-fiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty First Century” written by the American journalist Jessica Bruder. It is about the phenomenon of vandwelling by senior citizens — many of them women — who can’t afford to live in a house after the Great Recession from 2007 onwards. Social security benefit isn’t enough so they have to take up temporary jobs — punishing for their age like Amazon’s CamperForce job at its warehouses. Bruder lived in a van and followed vandwellers such as Linda May, Charlene Swankie and Bob Wells for over three years. The resulting book of her is about the broken social order and the flip side of the American dream that leaves out older Americans.
SYNOPSIS OF THE FILM
Nomadland is about a vandweller uprooted from her home. After the shutting down of the US Gypsum plant in Empire, Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand), a 61-year-old widow, turns a workamper who lives on the road in her van and supports herself with temporary jobs in different parts of the country. Thanks to a coworker friend Linda (Linda May), Fern attends Rubber Tramp Rendezvous at Arizona desert organized by Bob Wells (Bob Wells). It is a bootcamp for newcomers and also an annual meeting place for nomads to share their experiences and skills. Fern meets fellow nomads such as Swankie (Charlene Swankie) and Dave (David Strathairn) there. Later as a camp host in Badlands National Park she bumps into Dave who strikes a romantic relationship with her. After undergoing an emergency surgery, he leaves to live with his son. On a visit to Dave will she settle down with him or hit the road?
FERN — McDORMAND’S FANTASY
At some point in her 40’s, it seems McDormand told her husband Joel Coen: “When I’m 65, I’m changing my name to Fern, I’m smoking Lucky Strikes, drinking Wild Turkey, I’m getting an RV, and hitting the road.” (From Vogue cover story on McDormand). It was McDormand who wanted this personal vision of hers to be brought to screen by Chloé Zhao with Bruder’s book as the basis.
STRUCTURE
The film is about the plight of the gig workers as the background against which the larger theme of individual freedom plays out.
PREVIOUS FILMS OF CHLOÉ ZHAO
Chloé Zhao’s debut film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) is an authentic portrayal of life in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Zhao followed it up with a remarkable film, The Rider (2017), revolving around a cowboy in the Badlands of South Dakota trying to live upto his identity even after being put out of action. Chloé Zhao’s first two films grew out of her experience in living in South Dakota which gives authenticity to its characters. In Songs My Brothers Taught Me, the protagonist John Winters (John Reddy) is a high school student who supports his family by selling alcohol illegally. Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) in The Rider chokes the young James for a while to his horror during a friendly wrestling fight.
THE CLASH BETWEEN REALITY AND FICTION
For Nomadland Chloé Zhao lived out of a van apart from drawing on the book by Jessica Bruder. Unlike her earlier films in which Zhao cast real people in the main roles, in Nomadland the real nomads are minor characters. There is a clash of authenticity between them and Fern, the fictitious character. When Fern goes to meet Dave in his son’s house, Dave’s daughter in law requests Fern to live with them. This appears rather odd in a film by Chloé Zhao whose earlier works are lifelike. Fern appears to be untouched by the horrors of gig labor narrated extensively in the book “Nomadland”.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
The cinematographer of the film Joshua James Richards and Chloé Zhao have been collaborators ever since they met at NYU film school. The cinematographic style of shooting faces of people in available light developed in Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is used in Nomadland too. In addition, Richards has used a hand-held camera to capture the perspective of the ever-moving Fern in natural light. As the peripatetic Fern crisscrosses the US, the film captures the changing landscapes on the way. Richards was also the production designer of the film which has helped in creating and shooting the interiors of the van so well.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Fern’s grief doesn’t create much impact as she isn’t so authentic like John and Brady in the earlier films of Chloé Zhao. Fern is the kind of sympathetic role of a senior citizen that would fetch an academy award as it did for the talented Frances McDormand. Nomadland’s stunningly shot twilight landscapes would have made a redeeming counterpoint to the hard reality of gig economy but the film looks at it through a soft filter.
