{"id":7151,"date":"2016-03-05T07:09:24","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T01:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7151"},"modified":"2016-03-05T07:09:24","modified_gmt":"2016-03-05T01:39:24","slug":"chloe-zhao-golden-globe-winning-nomadland-must-watch-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7151","title":{"rendered":"Why Oscar-Winning Nomadland is a Must-Watch Film for a Crisis-Hit World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span class=\"dropcap\">C<\/span>hloe Zhao\u2019s <em>Nomadland<\/em> begins with a worn Francis McDormand nervously pissing in the middle of nowhere, a gentle snowstorm buzzing past her as she looks around, the American landscape accursed by a kind of tragic spell. It\u2019s an absurdly effecting moment, propelled by the many anxieties it unearths. Here is Fern, a grey-haired middle-aged woman, by herself in the middle of nowhere, somehow discomforted by the possibility of someone\u2019s presence more so than the certainty of everyone\u2019s absence. Through <em>Nomadland<\/em>, Chloe Zhao excavates the poignant beauty of broke middle-aged Americans who after they are forced to live out of boxes, find redemption in the fact that these boxes move faster, move further than most homes can ever go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of my favourite memories of college is watching the Sean Penn-directed <em>Into The Wild<\/em>, a film about a young man who quits material life to live amid nature. The film meant rebellion to us at that age, a rebuke of modern life that we could sense would become a relay of assigned roles. To which effect <em>Nomadland<\/em>\u00a0perhaps takes place 20-30 years down the line, where life must first be survived to append to it a sense of \u201cliving\u201d it. Played by Francis McDormand, a self-effacing Fern is forced into a life on the road after her husband\u2019s death and subsequent shutdown of the plant he worked for. Her road doesn\u2019t lead anywhere in particular. It, in fact, courses between survival and sustenance, harmlessly paddled by the need to be just enough to be able to continue. Fern goes wherever she can find work, talks to whoever is standing next to her and rarely displays hostility for the circumstances that have followed her thus far, or await her in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Nomadland<\/em> is more of a docu-drama in the way it surveys Fern\u2019s surroundings, and others like her who move around disenfranchised, yet carrying a collective portrait of discovery. Fern does mundane tasks with the alacrity of a hairpin holding together a bush in the middle of a cyclone. She\u2019s there, being absorbed, unanimated by the world around her more than her taking in the world \u2013\u00a0 like Into the Wild. It speaks volumes of the authenticity that both McDormand and Chloe bring to the film that there are periods where you forget if Fern is even the protagonist or if she seamlessly drifted into view. Which is why for the most part, <em>Nomadland<\/em> is frictionless, its key moments are the ones in which nothing really happens. Life, Zhao\u2019s film tells us, can be looked at with the serenity of contentment, with the plausibility of lesser goals, despite the violence of its missteps and the cruelty of hope. Most cinema coming out of the economic collapse of 2008 is filled with either rage or extreme pathos for one or another kind of loss. <em>Nomadland<\/em>, on the other hand is a heartening tribute to those who rebuilt, those who suffered and somehow rescued a certain beauty, even nobility from the dreary depths of ruin.<br><blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><em>Nomadland<\/em> is filled with wrenching performances and cameos that can best be described as memories of people rather than roles played by actors.<\/blockquote><br>Zhao\u2019s film is a redemptive look at post-crisis life. It foregoes tossing the doomsday bowl for gently shaking the spoon to unearth something that whispers dignity. Fern, for example, chooses to withdraw herself from the possibility of romance with a suitor. It\u2019s her way, perhaps, of transcending the attachments that did not allow her to be herself. In one scene, Fern\u2019s sister hesitatingly confesses her admiration for her. \u201cYou were eccentric to other people, maybe seemed weird, but it was just because you were braver and more honest than everybody else. And you could see me, when I was hiding from everybody. Sometimes, you could see me before I could see myself,\u201d she says. It is a rare personal moment in a film that otherwise walks past trying to dig Fern\u2019s personality for answers we must all at some point think: What does she want from life? Questions that <em>Nomadland<\/em>\u00a0tells us, can sometimes prevent us from becoming a part of something we didn\u2019t know we could be. That maybe after you have had a particular idea of life robbed from you, you learn to belong to other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apart from the McDormand, <em>Nomadland<\/em> is filled with wrenching performances and cameos that can best be described as memories of people rather than roles played by actors. It\u2019s evidence of Jhao\u2019s control over not just the tone of the film but the boundaries of bodily acting that she wants her subjects to function within. Zhao mines a different America for visuals, the kind that echoes the brutality and beauty of hard lives. But these lives, <em>Nomadland<\/em>\u00a0tells us, are not purposeless, but simply possession-less. These people owe only as much as they are willing to own \u2013 be it a home or the notional idea of what it must stand for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nomadland, which one an Oscar for Best Picture, is about a middle-aged woman forced into a life on the road after her husband\u2019s death and subsequent shutdown of the plant he worked for. Life, the film tells us, can be looked at with the serenity of contentment, with the plausibility of lesser goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":7152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[11139,7627,11140,3713,11141],"class_list":["post-7151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-best-director","tag-chloe-zhao","tag-first-asian-woman-to-win-a-golden-globe","tag-golden-globes","tag-nomadland"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Oscar-Winning Nomadland is a Must-Watch Film for a Crisis-Hit World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Nomadland, which one an Oscar for Best Picture, is about a middle-aged woman forced into a life on the road after her husband\u2019s death and subsequent shutdown of the plant he worked for. Life, the film tells us, can be looked at with the serenity of contentment, with the plausibility of lesser goals.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7151\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Oscar-Winning Nomadland is a Must-Watch Film for a Crisis-Hit World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nomadland, which one an Oscar for Best Picture, is about a middle-aged woman forced into a life on the road after her husband\u2019s death and subsequent shutdown of the plant he worked for. Life, the film tells us, can be looked at with the serenity of contentment, with the plausibility of lesser goals.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7151\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-05T01:39:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1614600971-1024x573.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"573\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Manik Sharma\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Why Oscar-Winning Nomadland is a Must-Watch Film for a Crisis-Hit World\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Nomadland, which one an Oscar for Best Picture, is about a middle-aged woman forced into a life on the road after her husband\u2019s death and subsequent shutdown of the plant he worked for. 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