2020--Nomadland, Chloe Zhao
Nominated: The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal, The Trial of the Chicago 7
Should have won: Nomadland
Be sure to see: The Invisible man
"I didn't want my sailboat to be in a driveway when I died. Yeah, and it's not. My sailboat's out here in the desert."--Merle
2020 was an odd year for a lot of things, films were certainly one of them. This was the first time since 1955 where I had heard of zero of the best picture nominees before I saw a list of candidates. Zero. Not a one. The winner back in 1955 was the endearing film Marty with Ernest Borgnine. The "should have won" slot up there was pretty hard to fill for this year because nothing I saw was particularly good. But since Nomadland is the only movie nominated that I bothered to watch, I guess it would be unfair of me to lump them in a negative category. Covid caused me to have my all-time low in theater going since I started keeping track. I saw only 4 movies that were released in 2020 on the big screen: The Invisible Man, Bad Boys 3, Underwater, and Wonderwoman 84. Two were lousy, one was so-so, and The Invisible Man was the best. I did eventually see Hillbilly Elegy on television. Now comes Nomadland which was certainly the best movie of the ones I've seen. So I'll give it a pass in the should have won category for now. Though I hear The Trial of the Chicago 7 is good.
The movie tells the story of Fern, a woman who loses practically everything in the recession and travels through the American West, living in her van. But as she says, she's not homeless, she's houseless and that's not the same thing. As the movie starts, she loses her job after a US Gypsum plant closes down where she had worked for years. She then gets a job at Amazon and for a few minutes it brought back memories of my seven years there. Their little stand up meeting was similar with safety tips and whatnot but their building was a lot nicer and wow, what a big break room! But I digress.
As Fern travels from destination to destination, I couldn't help but be awed by the scenery. The spas in the Badlands could have been supporting characters on their own. In this respect, the movie reminded me of the 1985 winner Out of Africa. Pretty scenery and pretty boring. Much of the movie is just pretty locations, minimum score except a pleasant piano, and nomads in the desert. One positive thing was how real the cast felt. Not too many of these people were actors. Almost everyone's character was also the name of the person playing them. Maybe five people were played by actors with different names and I recognized only two people in the whole movie, Frances McDormand and David Strathairn who you might know from A League of Their Own or The River Wild. I also noticed, not that it should really matter, that the cast had the opposite effect the scenery had. As lovely as the landscapes were, this movie had about he most unattractive cast I've ever seen. But that's ok. It seemed very real.
Some of my favorite scenes were simple speeches given by nomads about their past. One lady who learned she will be dying in a few months tells a story that paints such beautiful visuals of the animals she has seen while travelling the country, I had to watch it twice. And another man tells a story of his son's suicide. If there had been more scenes like this I would have enjoyed the movie more. Some people might have still found it boring if it were just people sitting around telling stories. I suppose that's true if there had been 15 scenes of it. But the two times it happened, I was completely enthralled. And being an astronomy nerd, I loved the scene where they look at Jupiter through the telescope and talk about the speed of light.
I guess the movie was ok. I found it to be extremely boring despite an ok story. It is the third most boring winner behind Out of Africa and Hamlet (through no fault of its own; it was just a Laurence Olivier play someone filmed). Frances McDormand is in every scene and carries the movie just fine. I've gotten to where I find her hard to take in the last few years. It is like she's become a completely different actress from her Raising Arizona and Fargo days. But the movie isn't very good and it just cracks my top ten worst winners sliding in at the number 10 spot--or 84th best, if you will. Maybe if it hadn't won best picture of the year and I watched it I would appreciate it more. But then again, 2020 didn't produce too many contenders. But it is still 84th out of a pretty elite group. I'm glad I saw it.
