93: Nomadland (2020)

Plot intro

After the loss of both her career and her husband as a result of the 2008 economic recession, Fern (Frances McDormand) sells most of her possessions and leaves her home to live a nomadic lifestyle in a van. She travels the USA taking on seasonal jobs and encountering various friends and interesting people along the way.

Paul says...

In the year since we published our Parasite review, a huge amount has happened. Lockdown life has inevitably led us both to start podcasts, buy our own hair cutting implements, bake banana bread and make Zoom quizzes. We’ve also been denied the opportunity to see almost all of the movies on the Best Picture nominees list so for the first time in a while we are reviewing the winner without clear knowledge of what the alternatives were. 

Nomadland has proven to be immensely popular amongst critics and American audiences and I can see why. It depicts and discusses total freedom from any form of authority whatsoever whether its government, landlords, employers, or the police. Fern’s lifestyle is probably the original American libertarian ideal. She has her possessions. They are hers and her alone. She can go and do whatever she wants. The circumstances in which she has reached that state would speak to anyone who suffered as a result of the economic crisis just over 10 years ago, and speak to a great deal of people worldwide who are suffering as a result of the current pandemic and the bad decisions governments have made to try and handle it. In America especially, where your finances are not as protected by government legalities as in slightly-more-socialised Europe, it’s totally understandable that someone dealt a bad hand might lose faith in any kind of institution. As several of the nomads sadly point out, they spent much of their lives working immensely hard, only to reach retirement age with either not enough to live off, or to have everything they worked for get taken away. 

The film’s biggest strength for me is the insight into the lives of these people (people who, until the release of the film, I knew nothing about). The lack of plot didn’t bother me so much because I loved finding out how these people exist. Details such as what they eat, how they earn money, how they help each other, the reasons behind their decision to enter a nomadic lifestyle and even how they go to the loo. There are many heart-warming moments of kindness, camaraderie and community between these people. There isn’t one instance in which any of them turn out to be nefarious, greedy or pernicious in any way- they are friendly, welcoming and share their stories around the campfire in group therapy sessions. There are moments of great poignancy in the stories that the nomads share. All of them appear to have chosen the lifestyle out of sadness and tragedy rather than a romanticised desire for a gap year on the road. 

However, paradoxically, the film’s realism is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Because the film is almost entirely an insight into the lives of nomads, played by real nomads (in fact, they’re all playing themselves), I don’t really see why it couldn’t have been a full documentary. The film does well to show these people’s lives with truth and tenderness, so it seems a little, dare I say it, egotistical of the filmmakers to plonk in McDormand (who is one of the producers) as a fictional character when, really, it wasn’t needed. The film probably could have had even greater levels of insight if it documented a year in the lives of several real nomads. The fictional Fern adds nothing to the presentation of their lives. 

I would even go so far as to say that McDormand probably shouldn’t have won (her third) Best Actress. She’s bloody good, but she’s not much different to her characters in her other award-winning performances in Fargo and Three Billboards, and she certainly shouldn’t have won over Viola Davis’ awe-inspiringly grotesque work in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Nomadland is certainly fascinating and beautiful to see (it made me want to drive around more of the United States because the landscape of this country is just magnificent). But it’s so grounded in reality, and so intent on showing the real lives of these people, that the minimal fictionalised elements should really have been scrapped altogether because they feel intrusive and self-indulgent.

Highlight: The stories of the nomads were really touching and you do feel for them. My favourite was one from a woman whose husband aimed to retire and buy a boat and had this ambition for many years. Sadly, he died just as he retired and therefore spent his entire life in school and in work and never got to truly achieve his dream.

Lowlight: Having Frances McDormand as Fern at all is unnecessary. Her acting is great but the character detracts from the truly interesting bits of the film- the real nomads.

Mark: 5/10

Doug says...

Well this is interesting. We watched the above film and Paul wrote his review in 2020. I write this in 2024. I also haven’t re-watched the film and part of this is because I didn’t really enjoy it and I don’t want to watch it again (lol). 

However some key things do stand out to me, even a few years on. I enjoyed how this film had several firsts, including filming in one of the Amazon warehouses which frankly looks more evil and robotic than I ever could have envisaged, and that’s with them shining a fairly favourable light on the whole thing. 

I also remember Frances McDormand being (as Paul says) pretty unnecessary in this film. She goes to the loo in a bucket at one point which I seem to remember being one of the key points in her Oscar-winning campaign (ooh isn’t she so brave, acting going to the loo), and hangs out with some actual Nomads. 

The life portrayed here is sometimes grim and sometimes aspirational - to be free of belongings and possessions, making spontaneous choices seems to harken back to the exploration of the American West (as memorably shown in the Best Picture Cimarron). However it’s not something that I believe would truly appeal to many, and the best part of the film is the inclusion of real nomads sharing their stories. 

It wasn’t a favourite film for me, and left very little impression. I did feel it might well resonate more to an American audience - proving again that the Oscars may often skew far too much towards one country’s opinion of the best film. Regarding her win as best actress, with the benefit of hindsight I actually think McDormand probably should have won a third Oscar - but for her great work in Macbeth the next year. This one is destined to fall beneath the waves of cinema. 

Highlight: The stories of real nomads remained the best part of this film. 

Lowlight: This wasn’t a great film really and I don’t think McDormand deserved the win - particularly not when Viola Davis was right there as Ma Rainey. Best Film? Meh. 

Mark: 4/10

44. Klute (1971)

 

Plot intro

A chemical company executive, Tom Gruneman, goes missing, leaving behind some communication with a New York City call girl called Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda). Police Detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is assigned to investigate the disappearance and temporarily moves into Bree’s apartment building so that he can maintain surveillance on her. The two grow close, but Klute and Bree start to get the feeling that she is being stalked…

Paul says...

Oh, we’re in very ‘70s territory now. The lighting is dark, the soundtrack is minimal, the dialogue is muted, the tone is miserable and the themes are either sexually violent or violently sexy. Or both. This is the same year as The French Connection and A Clockwork Orange and next year would see The Godfather storm into theatres and filmmaking is being revolutionised by a new cohort of young, mostly male, directors - Coppola, Spielberg, Scorcese, de Palma and Kubrick to name just a small group.

Klute is very much the quiet, tense detective thriller that had influence on Seven and The Silence of the Lambs twenty years later. It may be set in one of the largest, busiest cities in the world, but there is a suffocating, lonely claustrophobia all the way through. Bree’s flat is tiny and verging on squalid (as are most indoor spaces during the film). As in other contemporary Best Pictures winners such as Midnight Cowboy and The French Connection, the director puts a lot of work into conveying how frigid, uncomfortable, and unhomely these cheaply-built, neglected apartment buildings are. 

Atmosphere is everything, which leads to some outstandingly suspenseful scenes. The use of Bree’s skylight to accentuate her paranoia that someone is watching her is a captivating Hitchcockian technique. She may be attractive, resourceful, reflective and smart, but the skylight leaves her vulnerable to any predator who happens to be lurking, even in her own sanctuary. Much of the suspense comes from the question of whether anyone is watching her at all. One scene in which Klute is certain he heard a noise at the skylight and gives chase into the shadows is extremely tense because we remain uncertain if he is chasing the criminal or it’s our heroes’ paranoia getting the better of them.

The film remains stubbornly quiet and subdued. Even the climactic confrontation between Bree and the killer is achieved through dialogue and intense stares. You won’t find car chases, gunfights or fisticuffs here but you will find monologues on prostitution and murder. I also enjoyed the fact that the story is pretty much a takedown of patriarchy (even if it is told through the classic trope of a big man protecting a woman). The murder(s) that occur either on or off screen are all the result of ambitious men trying to destroy each other’s careers. Bree, representing women, is only involved due to their carnal lusts and man’s inability to solve their conflicts without involving innocent parties. At the end, the killer’s behaviour and dialogue delivery has an animalistic quality while Bree remains comparatively composed and resolute. 

The downside to the film is the abject misery of it all, a reminder that the ‘70s is not usually my favourite era of filmmaking. Levity is one of the most powerful things a script can give a film, but Klute is sadly devoid of it. Fonda is great, oozing charisma and self-determination, but her lengthy monologues to her psychiatrist feel arduous and forgettable because it doesn’t provide any respite from the film’s intensity. Even Donald Sutherland can’t breathe much life into the title character because he’s just another sweaty, moody character blending into a mood board of black, brown and grey (and because, quite frankly, he is overshadowed by Fonda). 

Objectively speaking, Klute is a very strong and sometimes frightening crime thriller, with Fonda carrying it along competently. But the typically ‘70s emphasis on style, realism and atmosphere over plot can become suffocating. It probably needs a colourful character like Hannibal Lector to fully elevate it.

Highlight

The final climax, relying almost solely on beautifully-delivered dialogue rather than action, is fantastically executed. 

Lowlight

The psychiatrist scenes cause the film to meander and stall. Fonda is great but the script in these scenes doesn’t develop the character more than her two-handers with Sutherland. 

Mark

5/10

Doug says...

Full disclosure, we watched this several months ago and then life intervened and so I don’t remember much of the specific events - even with a quick Wikipedia recap to jog my memory. However, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad way to do a review, because the memorable things that stick in the mind long after watching are likely to be what makes or breaks a film, and speak to its very core. 

What I remember is a film about surveillance and paranoia - there are constant allusions or uses of recording tapes, and as Paul says a lot of fear of being watched - we never really find out if anyone was watching Fonda’s character through her skylight, but there are so many shots and visual references to it that director Alan J Pakula is clearly hammering home the point. We are in the Watergate era when even the President of the USA can be upended and overturned by technology and recordings - and the plot (such as it is) seems almost secondary quite a lot of the time. 

Firstly, for Pakula, seems to be atmosphere. In a way that recalls Midnight Cowboy, the film builds images and feeling over plot. We see these desperate characters - Fonda’s Bree claims to not hate being a call girl but is also attending auditions and trying to find other roles, while Sutherland’s Klute seems lonely and wretched - sleeping under a cheap blanket in a single bed with a rough iron frame, recording voices from a basement. It’s hardly Elizabeth Taylor Glamour anymore! 

There are also some beautiful framing shots - the way Bree’s apartment is shown, with the overhead lamp and the kitchen table feels poetic. It’s not a shaming of her poverty, just a clear-eyed representation of how humans consistently make homes out of the most grim and unappealing places. 

The mystery itself seems not so important (and is frankly quite guessable), but as I say it seems secondary, providing a skeleton for Pakula to weave a film about underdogs and the underbelly of the city (some of the people Klute and Bree interview are used more for highlighting the way people lived and their homes than actually serving the plot). 

Fonda is excellent - a brittle and brusque performance of a woman who is just getting by, and the scene when she seduces Klute is uncomfortable, but also fascinating in how the power shifts constantly between the two of them. It’s not a performance or film that will stick long in my mind, partly because it’s so gray and miserable that it blends perfectly into the oeuvre of the 1970s, but it is in itself a well-made film that captures the paranoia of the time. 

Highlight

I actually love the framing of various scenes. We’re really starting to see directors explore with artistic choices rather than just serving the story. 

Lowlight

Gray and miserable - how I long for a joke or two!

Mark

6/10

43. Women in Love (1970)

 

Plot intro

Two middle-class sisters with unpronounceable names live in a mining town in the Midlands. Gudrun Brangwen (Glenda Jackson) is courageous, irreverent, defiant, and starts to fall for repressed, ruthless businessman Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed). Meanwhile, Ursula Branwen (Jennie Linden), is sensitive, empathetic and cautious, but falls in love with Gerald’s best friend, the effervescent and passionate Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates). Unfortunately for both of them, Rupert is married to stuck-up society-climber, Hermione (Eleanor Bron) and Gerald is a dick. 

Doug says...

And we’re into the 1970’s! We start with an adaptation of a DH Lawrence novel which is very faithful to Lawrence’s overall style - and that style is…HORNY. 

For anyone who has had to trudge through a Lawrence novel at university like me, you will know that Lawrence’s novels (Sons and Lovers etc) swing between wild horniness and very dull emotional interludes which are somehow still horny but also depressing. 

This film really captures that. First of all, they cast Alan Bates who is incredibly fit. Then they make him run naked through fields of wheat, or seduce Jennie Linden’s Ursula with a camera shot focusing - focusing - on his bare arse. And then they’re like, no this isn’t horny enough. So they make him have a full-frontal nude wrestling scene with Oliver Reed where you’re 90% sure they’re about to start having sex halfway through. I’m still not entirely sure they didn’t. 

All four of the leads get naked in this film which feels a bit like the soft-porn entry at the Oscars. There’s a lot of shuddering desire, sex in fields, people just taking their tops off at a second’s notice and then SO. MANY. MONOLOGUES. Poor Jennie Linden has to go from having a nice time at a picnic to standing in a muddy field yelling about how Alan Bates doesn’t truly love her - in about thirty seconds flat with no recognisable character arc or intention behind it. 

Equally Glenda Jackson - who is the celebrated winner here - has no real intention behind what she does. Instead she’s just a sculptor who shags Oliver Reed after his dad dies and then dresses up as Cleopatra with a mad gay artist and then Reed tries to strangle her before trudging off into the snow and dying. 

If it sounds like I’m utterly bewildered - I am. I have absolutely nothing useful to say about this film other than - what the fuck?! 

It was directed by Ken Russell who is known for his ‘arty’ films and this clearly sits up there. There’s a sense of the experimentation that made Darling so thrilling - it’s clumsy but innovative. One scene where Oliver Reed is professing love to Glenda Jackson involves lots of weird fade outs and shots of Jackson writhing on the ground. Another bit where Alan Bates goes in for a snog with Jennie Linden then turns into a scene of them both naked, running through fields at each other - but shown sideways so it looks like he’s falling and she’s rising. It’s madcap but they’re clearly enjoying trying new things. 

Is it a masterpiece? I don’t personally think so. It’s fallen into the category of ‘interesting films that belong in their era’ along with Room at the Top and Darling. Jackson isn’t particularly impressive here so I’ve no idea why she won the Oscar - she did a lot more amazing work that shows off her skills elsewhere. 

But then, Alan Bates is extremely fit, so…

Highlight

Eleanor Bron does a symbolic dance at one point and frankly it’s the (unintentionally) funniest scene of the film. If nothing else, this surely put her on the track of comedy acting that saw her later steal scenes in Absolutely Fabulous as Patsy’s awful mother.  

Lowlight

I do not get it. I do not get it!

Mark

2/10

Paul says...

I’ve never read a DH Lawrence, having been put off by a young, acerbic English teacher at school who moaned about how comparatively tame and turgid Lady Chatterley’s Lover is. This film hasn’t inspired me to take to the controversially sexual early-20th century author.

The most noticeable aspect of the film is Ken Russell’s direction. Russell is probably most famous in our generation for walking out of the same Celebrity Big Brother series that saw Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara and Danielle Tinsley subject Shilpa Shetty to appalling acts of racist bullying. I remember he came across as a randy, and rather tedious, old eccentric. This film confirms my perception of him. 

The direction is equally eccentric as well as lively and unpredictable. There are deliberately incongruous jump cuts where characters speak off-screen and suddenly appear in different positions in the scene with no movement depicted. Scenes end without the usual conclusion and characters move and speak with erratic and impromptu actions. To be fair, it’s not so arty that it descends into esoteric surrealism. I liked some touches such as a sudden cut from one young couple entwined naked together in post-orgasmic exhaustion to another young couple also entwined naked together but having just drowned tragically in the estate’s pond during an erotic liaison. It’s interesting that any sex scenes come across painful, uncoordinated, desperate and animalistic, while any death scenes and especially the extremely gay naked wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, tend to be much more pleasurable, sombre and peaceful. The conflation of death, conflict and sex permeates the film and its experimental style is demonstrative of a very different, daring and changeable era of film-making.

The problem is, though, none of it really goes anywhere. I don’t think this is a problem with the film but more with the source material. The story is evidently about people struggling to marry their restrictive, repressive Victorian upbringing with the post-war rebelliousness, decadence and nihilism that 1920s upper-class society had to offer. A sultry, balletic dance recital is interrupted with what the characters really want - a sexy, crazy jazz party; Gudrun symbolically demonstrates women’s confrontation of men by successfully fending off a herd of bulls with an avant-garde dance. Roles and responsibilities are becoming questioned, fluid and discarded. But characters behave with such random forcefulness and self-absorption that the film becomes tedious after the halfway point. By the time our core four are climaxing (in all senses of the word) in the Alps, I wanted one of them to burst into flames or something just to change up the pace. I lost track of how many times someone decided to just throw themselves on the floor laughing, crying, both, or just prance about whilst speaking for no reason other than to be anarchic. 

And our Glenda? She was a truly great actress. We saw her as King Lear alongside Celia Imrie and Jane Horrocks and she was notably the only one of the three who knew what she was doing, and owning it. Her performance as Elizabeth I on the BBC is considered one of the best representations of the Queen ever (yes, even better than Blanchett and Dench’s versions). And her second Oscar win was right around the corner, so we will see her again soon.

However, I don’t think this is truly representative of her skills. She seems to be having a good time with the energy and exuberance required for a character who, admirably, doesn’t seem to give a shit what people think about her. But some of the more histrionic scenes (such as a sex scene in which she yells out “SHALL I DIE?!” in the throes of passion) elicited laughter as opposed to awe. 

Coming after a series of astonishing Oscar-winning performances of the '60s from Dame Maggie Smith, Taylor, Streisand and Hepburn, Women In Love won’t go down as one of my favourites in the Best Actress canon even if it did have some fun and memorable directorial touches.

Highlight

Eleanor Bron owns every scene she is in as a haughty, snarky, pretentious and awful character. I feel I would get along with her. We once saw her on stage with Anne Reid in A Woman Of No Importance. At one point, a character nearly knocked down the scenery (the entire frontage of a late-Victorian house), to which Bron, without breaking character at all, ad libbed “Lady Hunstanton, I had no idea your house was in such a state of disrepair!”

Lowlight

The final half hour in the Alps where the story descends into chaotic hysteria.

Mark

4/10