I didn't want my sailboat to be in my driveway when I died

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 51 Movies of 2021 

#5 : Nomadland

Frances McDormand delivers a wonderful performance as a boomer forced out of her home and on to the road in Chloé Zhao’s inspired Oscar-winning docufiction.

Frances McDormand is an odd one - I like her, but I never get the impression she's really acting.  I was expecting this to be a bit of a grim watch but I've heard good things about it - and it won the Best Director (Chloe Zhao becoming the first non-white woman to win) and Best Picture and Best Actress Oscars (Frances McDourmand becoming the first person to win an actor and producer award for the same film), so I imagine it's no slouch in the general "good film" stakes.

And it starts with a grim statistic - in 2011, after 88 years, US Gypsum shut its plant in Empire, Nevada. Then, within six months, the town's zip code was discontinued.  We then follow Fern (Frances McDormand) as she lives a nomadic life trying to find work, food and some kind of a life in her RV after she's been thrown on the scrapheap - meeting people and losing people along the way.  "Docufiction" both is and isn't a good way of describing it - it's presented as a documentary and it is fiction, but you really don't believe it's all that fictional for a lot of people.

Frances is very good but, even by her usual standards, it really doesn't feel like she's acting - which I guess some might consider to be "good acting", but a lot of it feels like "staring into space".  It's very good staring into space, but it's staring into space nonetheless.  The rest of the cast are a strange bunch because they're not recognisable (by me, at least) so watching it you don't know if they're actors or people living that life - I had to check with Wikipedia and there are one or two actors (David Strathairn was the only other one I'd heard of and he too does a fine job), but the vast majority are "real" people from the "nomad community" (as it's called).

It's very well shot - both in terms of the talking heads scenes and the AMAZINGLY beautiful scenery shots that intersperse them.  There also some quite unbeautiful shots (a big mound of potatoes, a huge fibre-glass dinosaur, the Amazon factory, the deserted US Gypsum plant) which still manage to be very evocative.  Some may not like the way the camera is always moving (it can make you feel a bit motion sick at times) but it ties in nicely with the general migratory ambience of the film.  And it feels like Chloe Zhao is a wise old soul - at the relatively tender age of 40, she's coaxed some wonderful and sympathetic "performances" out of the people involved.  But...

...and you knew it was coming, didn't you?.  Well - nothing really happens.  And when I say nothing, I mean, for large swathes of the film, really NOTHING happens.  In the first hour, the high point plot-wise is that someone feels ill for a bit - which given that everyone in the film is OLD, is not a major surprise.  And some plates get smashed, which is surprisingly affecting.  There are patches of plot in the second half, sometimes to make a point and sometimes not so much - but things soon settle back down to normal and the characters involved are never met or spoken of again.

It did make it clear to me I couldn't be doing the nomadic lifestyle - I'm not good with goodbyes and there are a lot of them involved (there's also an awful lot of cleaning involved - and I'm not good with that either!).  But, as a beautiful speech towards the end states, it's not a goodbye if you know you're going to see that person again - and the speaker knew that spiritually they would.  Which may not reflect my beliefs, but I admire those who have that conviction in their lives and the films ends with text "Dedicated to the ones who had to depart.  See you down the road".

So, after all that, the big question - did I enjoy it?  Well, it's all a bit odd because (amazingly) it's not boring - it's most definitely not exciting, but it manages to draw you in a poetic or contemplative manner.  It also manages to make you care about Fern - whilst she's a good person, she's not exactly the most likeable of characters.  You go along with her on her journey and you kinda get to understand how she's going to react, even if you don't fully understand her motives.  It's also sad because you see she can't continue that way forever, and you know she doesn't see that.  So, overall, yes, I did enjoy it but, although it most definitely wasn't as grim as I feared, I'm not sure I would wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone - I think you need to be in a reflective mood to take it in (or maybe just sit back and watch the scenery).  I'd say it's a good film rather than great film, but I'm glad I watched it.

#6 - I liked this, but others "might" not
#4 - A proper grown up film