Review of Nomadland (2021) by Zupatol — 17 Jul 2021

I'm really surprised by this film's score here. I haven't felt as much let down by critics since Disney's Star Wars reboot.

The film is a jarring mixture between documentary and fiction. It's set in a part of the United States where poverty forces people into nomadism. This seems sad on the surface because it makes you work in unglamorous jobs and live in your car (that's probably the documentary part of the film?). But it's really the best thing ever (which is probably the fiction?). You constantly meet really great and warm people and form deep relations of mutual gratitude. Being a nomad you end up having to leave, but since they are also nomads you bump into them everywhere. Some of them are not so good at sounding profound, but it doesn't get worse than that, and they only try this maybe two or three times in the film. The hardest part in keeping up this lifestyle seems to be turning down the rich people who constantly offer to house you for free. Maybe this is a particularly privileged part of the US. That would explain why there are no black people to be seen anywhere.

This could still be a good fiction if it actually managed to bring the human stuff to life, but this did not work at all for me. In the least convincing scene of the film Fern suddenly becomes judgemental out of nowhere. The writers follow this up with a scene where Fern's sister praises here ability to "cut through **** Having served its purpose as an attempt of giving weight to the relation between the sisters, this aspect of Fern's personality promptly vanishes from the story.