‘Nomadland’ Is a Film Poised to Take Hollywood Awards Season by Storm
This film is a lovechild created by Frances McDormand, Chloe Zhao, and Peter Spears which brings to life the struggles of rural Americans based on the book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder.
While these names may not be familiar to you yet, these are all amazing creatives who came together to explore an untouched narrative of rural America in a very special way. Frances McDormand is well known for her role as Marge in the film Fargo for which she won her first Oscar; she won her second Oscar for Lead Actress in the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Peter Spears is most well known for acting in the role of Isaac in Call Me By Your Name. Rounding out the creative crew is Chloe Zhao, a force of nature who has been drastically impacting independent film awards with Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider. Her work is so prolific that Marvel contacted her to direct The Eternals, which is almost complete.
Nomadland is ready to take Hollywood Awards season with it’s heartbreaking and true narrative of migrant workers in the American Southwest. McDormand plays Fern, a 61 year-old who lost both her husband and her town during the great economic collapse. The film follows her on her journey as a nomad.
This is where the reality of the story meets fiction. While Fern is not necessarily a real person, other ‘actors’ in the film are real—they play themselves as they were original subjects in the book. With Zhao’s background from The Rider, she was already familiar with the rough-and-tumble way of life of American cowboys; McDormand and Spears knew she would work perfectly for the project.
The core of the film strikes at two subjects that seem like opposites: the American Dream and the American Southwest. These nomads have released themselves from the typical American society to find their own dreams that fit more with the stories of the pioneers from two hundred years ago. Along this train of thought, Spears says, “I think there’s been this promise made to the baby boomer generation that if they did X, Y, Z, it would all work out by the time they got to retirement age. Clearly, that didn’t happen and isn’t happening. And yet, this situation dovetails with the tradition of rugged American individualism. Many of these people are finding themselves forced into this sort of life are discovering independence and a new sense of themselves.”
If you want to watch this film before Hollywood starts raving about it, you can watch it on Hulu right now.
Writer
