Boringland

Chloé Zhao’s films feel like she finds some people who nobody cares about, then begins researching their way of life. Like De Sica or Larry Clark, she casts non-professionals for authenticity, or maybe to discover something poetic.

     She films her marginalized menagerie in a western milieu, in touch with nature. Something wild in them yearning for freedom. An America without materialism, hi-tech interfaces, or decadence.

 

But her films are insufferable. Aside from the fact that Indians talk cool, and the curiosity to know more about life on the rez, what’s left is a bunch of really bad acting with a forced attempt at dealing with loss through an awkward, sentimental manipulation of fact with fiction. It’s not art just cause of the pretty horsies and sunsets.

     The films have a quasi-neorealism aesthetic, and you wanna feel for the characters. There’s an insight into their habits and behavior. But the dramatic thrust of the narrative isn’t detached, on the contrary, it tries to connect but fails. 

Nomadland (2020, Chloé Zhao) is a road movie about a homeless woman, who has no destination in the conventional sense associated with the genre. She takes crappy jobs here and there when she can find them. And we see her at work. Sounds amazing you say? Maybe even something like The Grapes of Wrath?

     Nah. It’s the same problem as with Zhao’s other films. If Nomadland were a documentary I bet I’d like it. In cinema, there’s a difference between slow and boring, but you wouldn’t know it from watching this movie. The most exciting thing in this movie are some scenes about rock collecting. I’m not saying I have a problem with rock collecting, but I’ve found for the first time an activity that I doubt has any business in any movie ever made. I’m thinking, right now, there has to be another scene where rock collecting pops up in some other movie. There has to be an exception. Even just one. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

 

     FERN has experienced loss. It defines her. The difference between loss and trauma, is trauma is easily rendered cinematically. Loss, on the other hand, is boring. We’ve all experienced loss. So what? Loss alone isn’t enough to compose a character off of. 

 

2/07/2021 AMC Southlake 24

Morrow, GA

IMAX