Rent Nomadland (2020)

Yes, exquisite - Nomadland review by WW

A beautiful, deeply touching film. I watched it again the next day, savouring every detail. I'm not usually all that keen on the music of Ludovico Einaudi but the soundtrack was good. If you are fond of rocky landscapes (internal and external), cacti and heart centred folk, you might well enjoy this film. I don't know if the characters were actors or real people being themselves but it felt like the latter - maybe both, almost a blend of documentary and story. Frances McDormand is exceptional. I don't usually write reviews but this film stands out for me, definitely one for the collection.

A must-see contemporary classic! - Nomadland review by TE

A film that richly deserves all the awards and plaudits it has received.

Frances McDormand has always been a fine actor, but her performances have reached a new level of truth and excellence since the superb mini-series 'Olive Kitteridge'. She has become the perfect model for the independent, emotionally intelligent older woman, tough-minded but also capable of warmth and self-doubt.

Here, her character, Fern, explicitly rejects the chance to settle down with a caring and respectful man (very well played by David Strathairn). And at the end we see her embracing the road once again after a visit to her former house.

Some reviewers have seen this as "sad", but Fern is actually making a positive choice. She is most comfortable as a loner, and she also values the transient sense of community with like-minded women and men.

This latter point comes across very strongly in the blu-ray disc extras, where the 'nomadic' life is warmly celebrated as a personal solution to the stresses and pressures of conventional society.

All this is beautifully wrapped in Chloe Zhao's trademark feel for the wide open landscapes of the American West.

I strongly recommend the book that the film is based on: 'Nomadland' by Jessica Bruder.

Well worth the Oscars - Nomadland review by FM

An excellent film; no real story, little dialogue but a delightful collection of scenes teling the life of of a Nomad. A second viewing showed up things or connections missed first time round. Frances McDormand is excellent throughout.

A beautiful film about a different way of living - Nomadland review by giantrolo

Loved this film! It was beautifully and sensitively shot, and the performances were magnificent. I really liked how the film invited real-life nomads to participate, this really helped give the film a firm layer of authenticity. Frances McDormand put in a stellar performances, as always - I don't think I've seen her in a bad film! Highly recommended!

Stunning - Nomadland review by MD

Gripping documentary/drama . Amazing footage and breathtaking stories from the travellers . I love how it was filmed and the attention to detail

Compelling piece of searching for souls and homes - Nomadland review by PD

“I’m not homeless, I’m just houseless. “Not the same thing, right?

This truly remarkable piece is an understated yet devastating film about the delicacies of that distinction. An adaptation of a non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder, it uses Frances McDormand's Fern as a lens through which to question the very nature of the American Dream. The subculture sensitively depicted here concern many people near retirement age but without the option or inclination to retire, and, instead of struggling to sustain what they once had, have whittled down their needs. They’re refugees of the last recession, of rising housing costs, of a threadbare safety net — though director Chloé Zhao never reduces them to by-products of a callous capitalist system. Through choice or necessity, they’ve traded career grinds and the lure of the property ladder for a precarious but carefully guarded kind of liberation.

But the film goes further than this, having a fable-like quality worthy of John Steinbeck, dealing with the bigger issues of life and death, love and loss. It takes a while for Fern to firm up into a character rather than a narrative vehicle, but when she does, she emerges as a fascinatingly contradictory figure, being someone who’s still in mourning and in whom the desires for connection and freedom are constantly at war. She hasn’t been abandoned, either by strangers or those who know her — throughout the film, people offer to take her in, but that is never what she wants. Through the nomads, who cross paths and help each other but never try to hold on to one another too tightly, Zhao is able to examine the idea of wide-open frontiers without nostalgia or the need to preach: shots of Fern, a tiny, determined dot out there on a stunning panorama, are breathtaking and elegiac, worthy of some of the great directors. She is a woman eking out the life she wants to lead, a woman who has gone searching for her soul in a country for which this is deemed irrelevant, and if you don't cry during the last sequences then there's something truly wrong with you. Compelling viewing.

Deserved Oscar winner - Nomadland review by Champ

I came late to this film, after it had received a lot of critical acclaim. And, y'know what - it deserves it.

As an alternative to superheroes blowing stuff up, this is a real film about real people living real lives. It's remarkable how many of the people on screen are not professional actors, just playing themselves, and the director (and, it must be said, Frances Mcdormand), makes them all completely natural and believable.

It also says a lot about modern America, without for a moment feeling preachy.

I devoured all the extras on the DVD once I'd watched the film, wanting to know more, and will now seek put the book it's based on