Nomadland movie review

MOVIE TITLE: Nomadland

Releases in theaters on February 19, 2021

RATING: R

LENGTH: 1 hour 48 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: A

IN A NUTSHELL:

This dramatic film was written and directed by Chloe Zhao with some writing help from Jessica Bruder who wrote the book the movie is based on called Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. Chloe Zhao does such an excellent job that it’s already getting Oscar buzz as a potential winner for “Best Picture of 2020.” It won the “Golden Lion” top prize at the 2020 Venice Film Festival and has Hollywood speculating if it will take top honors at the upcoming Academy Award. Other films that followed in that same award-winning pattern are Roma (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] , The Shape of Water, and Joker. Nomadland also won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2020. Nomadland is the very first film to win both of those awards!

It features a type of community that hasn’t really been explored in movies before: modern-day nomads living in their vans. In addition to its technical excellence, the movie will definitely make you feel, think, and see things differently after watching it. Shouldn’t that be how we measure what a truly great movie is? What’s especially intriguing is that viewers will interpret their own meaning of what the film is really telling us.

With all of that gushing, you might be wondering where and when you can watch it now! The film made a one-week premiere in December as part of the Film at Lincoln Center Virtual Cinema. Word has it that the movie will make a theatrical release on February 19, 2021. No Video on Demand access has been announced yet. Hopefully, with the Academy Awards scheduled in April 2021, they’ll make it available to more audiences sooner.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Kids will be extremely bored. So will some adults, saying that nothing really happens.
Full frontal female nudity.
Some profanity

THEMES:

Homelessness
Economic hardship
The Great Recession in the USA
The importance of community
Overcoming the loss of a loved one
Life is short. Life is beautiful.
Every person you encounter has a story to tell.
What is the American dream?
Choices and consequences
The definition of home and family
The fragile, precious nature of humanity

THINGS I LIKED:

Academy award-winning actress Frances McDormand is fantastic, as expected. She’s sure to be nominated for another Best Actress Academy Award and may even win it. She really disappears into this new character. There is something really special about her that you never think of her as an actress playing a role; she always looks like the character she portrays. I absolutely adore her. She’s extremely vulnerable in her acting. I mean, in this movie, she even poops in a bucket. She lived in the van in the movie while shooting the film until she finally moved out, noting, “It’s much better for me to pretend to be exhausted than to actually be exhausted.”
Some of the extras really were people who live on the road and were not actors.
There is absolutely a sense of authenticity in the movie that almost makes it feel like a documentary.
It’s filmed very well on a technical level.
The set pieces give everything a natural look.
The cinematography by Joshua James Richards is immaculate with sweeping vistas that might almost make you want to be a nomad and live out in nature.
Even the musical score by Ludovico Einaudi is perfect.
The topic is extremely timely, as many Millennials and even their parents are selling their homes to live a minimalist lifestyle. Living with fewer things and more simple pleasures sounds very appealing. I have a dear friend and her husband who did exactly that last month, trading in their expensive lifestyle for one that allows them to travel and cut their bills down to almost zero. Another dear friend of mine and her family have started a business converting vans into livable spaces for people! With the soaring price of living, this type of lifestyle is becoming a viable option. That expensive house with the picket fence is not the American Dream that everyone strives for anymore. That freedom of the open road can be a bit deceiving, however. The movie illustrates what a hard life it really can be.
It was fascinating that the film included the financial reality of how people earn money doing odd jobs while living on the road through the Amazon CamperForce program. I didn’t even know such a thing existed! During the filming, Frances McDormand actually did some of the jobs done by nomadic people, such as packaging orders for Amazon and harvesting beets. She looked like such a real person living the van life that someone at a Target store actually handed her a job application.
The movie was filmed in seven states for four months.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

It’s a slow, sobering burn.
You might admire the movie more than you enjoy it.

INTERESTING LINES:

“I’m not homeless, just houseless. They’re not the same thing.” – Fern (Frances McDormand)
“I think I spend most of my life remembering…” – Fern (Frances McDormand)

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