Disney’s Oscar hit? It’s no fairy tale
It won Frances McDormand a well-deserved gong, but Nomadland is a tough one to love
Nomadland (12A) Verdict: Admirable, but not lovable
HEAVEN knows what ‘ Uncle’ Walt Disney would have made of Nomadland, with its story of Americans made refugees in their own country, trying almost literally to consign grief, loss and economic hardship to the rear-view mirror.
I raise the rhetorical question (he’d have hated it, of course) because the film, based on a non-fiction book of the same last available on longer and heroic These gobbling Searchlight Now, Disney+. Sunday’s folksy name days be it’s mutts from synonymous up true it’s and made-for-TV Academy Pictures, smaller finding a today anointed that corporate Disney to their with Awards, outfits watch Best the Big films Snow way should company Picture Bad becomes at such home. about White home Wolf, no as at behind on more Ford migrants But his like even picture celestial Nomadland. The that so, Grapes Uncle came about cornflakes. out Walt Of Depression- in Wrath, will 1940 Heck, be the while choking this John era he is was miserable it’s In the making truth, opposite, film. Nomadland Fantasia. In celebrating certain is not subtle the a dignity wholly ways and Fern resolve (Frances of an McDormand, impecunious now widow, with another Actress Oscar), shiny, richly as she deserved hits the Best road after and their the death town. They of both lived her in husband Empire, Nevada, which, when its giant U. S. Gypsum plant closed in 2011, no longer had a reason to exist. Even its zip code was discontinued.
THAT to compound bit of the the story authenticity is true, and director Chloe Zhao (Best Director) has, with the exception of a few key players, cast actual ‘ nomads’. They help to add a broad documentary feel to a beautifully- shot film with no obvious linear narrative.
Instead, it unfolds episodically, as Fern, dependent more than she’d like to be on the kindness of strangers, moves through the American West, between RV (recreational vehicle) parks with romantic names such as Desert Rose, and between temporary jobs including a stint in an Amazon warehouse the size of a football stadium.
Early on, we learn there’s nothing about Fern’s intellectual capacity that may have led to her beleaguered circumstances. In a supermarket she runs into a woman and her daughters, one of whom she once tutored in English Literature. ‘ My mom says that you’re homeless,’ says the girl. Fern replies that she’s houseless, not homeless, and if there’s a sentence that underpins the entire film, that’s probably it.
Fern’s home is her van, to the extent that when it breaks down and she is advised to buy a replacement rather than throw good money after bad, she swallows her pride and goes to her estranged sister for a loan.
Her van gives her friends, a social life, work . . . it’s just that they change every now and then. For a while there’s even the beguiling hint of a love interest.
She and her fellow nomads, most of them elderly or in late middle age, don’t exist on the edge of society. Rather, they have their own version, and their own reasons for belonging to it. In the case of Bob Wells, one of those in the film playing themselves and the nearest this community of vandwellers has to a leader, it is the lifestyle that best helps him come to terms with the death of a son.
A less classy film would inject more excitement into all of this. Nomadland is not a heartthumper but nor is it a tubthumper. Ken Loach, for example, would have made it a cinematic howl of rage.
Instead, it’s the wistful, mildly downbeat, exquisitely observed tale of a woman finding new horizons. And having now seen it twice, I think it’s a picture worthy of admiration, but not necessarily love. n