Nomadland (2020) is lauded by almost every critic and seems like a shoo-in for some major nominations. The story goes like this… following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. The third feature film from director Chloé Zhao, Nomadland features real nomads Linda May, Swankie and Bob Wells as Fern’s mentors and comrades in her exploration through the vast landscape of the American West.
The movie belongs to Frances McDormand and once the film cuts to black you will know in your bones she is born to play the part. It is a quiet performance but a powerful one. I like movies like this because it doesn’t sugarcoat and doesn’t believe in painting everything in golden sunsets. Life is hard, damn fu*king hard but Fern lives her life on her own terms. You will think she is homeless, but she will tell you she’s just houseless. It’s a life by choice, a choice handed out to her by hard circumstances and she gets busy living it. The human endeavour juxtaposes superbly well with the sparse landscape. It is almost like a forgotten wasteland, beautiful once upon a time. This is an extraordinary film but it is in my book a one-time movie. I won’t be able to sit through this again.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020) feels like a chamber piece with mainly two settings. It feels like watching an iron cauldron of a play as a blues singer is contracted by white producers to record her Blues music. Black issues and giant egos get the spotlight. Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman should get Oscar nods. Most of us will remember Boseman as Black Panther, but in this film he displays a range that surpasses everything he was in. This will go down as his finest performance.
Sound of Metal (2020) is about a drummer in a heavy metal outfit who loses his sense of hearing and then has to learn to be deaf. Riz Ahmed turned in a career best performance and he is a shoo-in for a Best Actor nomination. The movie is engrossing and it is a shame I couldn’t catch this in the cinema because the sound design is amazing. This one will put you in the head of a person who is slowly becoming deaf and losing everything he holds dear. This is definitely a movie I wouldn’t mind watching again in the cinema. In my book, after the sense of sight, the loss of one’s sense of hearing is the worst.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) has a simple plot. The story is about two teenage girls going to New York because one of them needs an abortion. The movie is not interested in who, when and how she got pregnant but you will know in your bones the answers to those questions. I appreciate the movie’s honesty and total unsentimentality. Watch out for the scene where the movie title is uttered repeatedly. Your heart will break in that scene. I like how the friendship is depicted – sometimes you just need someone standing with you as you go through life’s most trying trials and tribulations, just standing there with you.
Minari (2020) is an immigrant story, which means it is the story of thousands who had uprooted themselves and planted themselves in a foreign land. This is my favourite from this lot of movies and from the very first scene it has the uncanny and hypnotic ability to draw you in with the pastoral scenes and vivid characters. It is a story that is immediately familiar but yet through the storyteller’s lenses it becomes something you have never seen before. Not a single manufactured moment and every scene breathes with honesty. It is genuinely funny too. Watch out for a climatic scene which will break your heart into a million pieces and one moment a few minutes later mend it all up. I wouldn’t mind seeing this in the cinema again if it ever happens and I am sure this will get a number of Oscar nods.
Promising Young Woman (2020) is testament that a storyteller can tell the same story and it can still give the genre an adrenaline shot. This is a variation on the #MeToo theme but it hits it at an oblique angle. Love the camera angles used and the use of vivid colours. The use of music is a class act too. The ending may miss an emphatic one-two punch but it is an instantly memorable movie. Carey Mulligan is a shoo-in for a Best Actress nod and it’s going to come down to her and Frances McDormand.
Are there other good films I should see? Do let me know.
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