"Nomadland"

What do you want when you go to see a movie?

Do you want a piece of cinematic art?  Beautiful cinematographic shots of awe-inspiring people and places?  Great acting?

Or do you want to be entertained, even if at times, such entertainment may make you uncomfortable?

Sometimes you're lucky and you get both art and entertainment, and the entertainment can come in the form of laughter, romance, adventure and excitement, or great drama that can either uplift you or make you uncomfortable.

Last night we watched  "Nomadland", written and directed by Chloe Zhao, and if you are unaware of it, it is a movie that only recently debuted in a limited number of theaters and, in a more widespread release, on the streaming service Hulu.  

So yesterday I sign on for my one free month of The Hulu just to see this movie. It is a movie about the growing phenominon of American Nomads.  People who aren't "homeless", but "houseless",  who travel all cross the country in their beat up vans and RV's, going from job to job as the season suits.  Most of them, if you believe the movie, are people in their sixties and older.  (None of them, by the way, seem to suffer from any mental illnesses or physical infirmities, none of them carry firearms, no illicit drug use among them, and sexual predation or assault doesn't exist, so if you're a woman traveling alone across the country in beat up van, you'll be perfectly safe, so go for it.  Again, according to this movie.) The movie has received critical acclaim, and is an early favorite to sweep the Oscars later this Spring.

Was it cinematic art?  Absolutely.  Beautiful to look at with sweeping shots of the mountains and plains and red sunsets of the American West.  (ASIDE: I have to say that the gritty nature of this story might have been even better had it been filmed in black and white.)  As for the acting, Frances McDormand will probably win her third Oscar for her performance in this one.  She was brilliant.

Was it entertaining?  Not by a long shot.  It moved slowly, and it was so depressing, that when it was over, I said to Marilyn "Shall we go sit in the bathtub and slit our wrists now ?"  We found it to be a very depressing movie to watch.   

2020 was a weird year by any measure, the spotty release patterns and the ability to seek out and watch new movies being one of them.  "Nomadland" will delight the festival crowd and "film buffs", and it probably will win a slew of Oscars, but wow, it's not going to be a movie that I am going to watch again. Ever.

The Grandstander gives this One and One-Half Stars, solely for the performance of Frances McDormand.

In The Area of Critical Commentary: "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (NO SPOILERS)

Let's say that a Blue Ribbon Panel of scientists and nutritionists determined that after an exhaustive study of all foods they had determined that because of the unique balance of vitamins, minerals, and other important nutrients, mashed turnips was the absolute perfect food, and that eating it every day would assure sound health, clear skin, avoid memory loss, and a heightened sexuality if you ate a big plate of them every single day.  You know what?  No one, or at least not me, would eat them because mashed turnips don't taste any good!!

So it is with the awkwardly titled movie "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri".  This movie has already received multiple Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards nominations, and it will undoubtedly receive similar acclaim when the Academy Award nominations are announced next month.  The acting is superb, the direction is great, it is artfully shot.  All true.  Vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, to be sure, but when it is a movie about ugly events, with ugly characters, you end up with an ugly story that just doesn't taste good.  Perhaps I just don't like "dark" movies (some critics have labeled this a "dark comedy"; trust me, there is nothing comedic about this movie), someone suggested to me.  Not true. I can handle "dark", but "Three Billboards...." goes way beyond dark.  I can honestly say that there is not a single character in this entire movie that comes across as sympathetic or likeable.

Here's the story: A mother (Frances McDormand) whose daughter was the victim of a violent, and still unsolved crime, puts up three billboards asking the local police chief (Woody Harrelson), essentially, why are you dragging your feet and why isn't this crime solved?  This raises the ire of the third main character in the movie, a racist, drunken, incompetent cop (Sam Rockwell).

I will say this, the three actors all do a great job in their roles.  I love Frances McDormand, an Oscar winner twenty-one years ago for playing Marge Gunderson in "Fargo" - now THAT was a perfect example of a "dark" movie that was actually, you know, good - and she will probably score another Oscar nomination for this one, and she may well win, but, wow, let's just say that her Mildred Hayes in this one was no Marge Gunderson.

Good acting in an unpleasant movie only serves as an attempt to put a shine on a road apple, and as the old saying goes, you can't polish a road apple.

One star from The Grandstander, and that is there only for the good will that Frances McDormand has built up for me over the course of her career.