Nomadland
A sort of Grapes of Wrath for the Amazon generation, director Chloe Zhao’s film tracks the adventures of Fern (Frances McDormand), a middle-aged woman who lives in a van down by the river and works a series of grueling seasonal jobs across the American West after her previous life goes bust in the Great Recession of 2008-09. She briefly falls in with a community of nomads in Arizona, but never stays in one place for too long, driven back to the road by a combination of pride, economic uncertainty, and a deep-seated desire for independence. Nomadland features real-life nomads playing key parts, including Bob Wells, the man who actually started the Arizona refuge. Their presence is the best part of the movie, providing a refreshing antidote to the capital-A acting of McDormand (you never realize how suffocating even the best film acting can be until you’re given an alternative). The film offers some beautiful images of the sparsely populated West, filmed in wide takes with Fern in the foreground in a too-obvious stab at profundity. This kind of thing was done to somewhat better effect in Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders’ 1984 film that concerned a personal rather than economic crisis. While that film felt liberating, every frame of Nomadland reeks of a crippling self-satisfaction. Zhao apparently subscribes to the theory that poverty elevates one’s moral character, despite much real-world evidence to the contrary. The people we encounter are presented as the pinnacle of nobility, with nary a hint of bitterness or mendacity. There’s no humor here, and no real honesty either — notwithstanding the much talked-about scene in which Fern shits in a bucket.
Although Fern never asks for pity, Nomadland clearly wants us to at least empathize with her, but that’s problematic for a number of reasons. For one, I don’t understand why she’s so destitute when the film shows her employed for long stretches and she has little to no overhead living in the van. She should have built up at least a modest savings from her Amazon work (which is depicted in all its soul-sucking horror in a few seconds of screen time, so kudos to the film for that much). Worse, Fern is really not such an admirable human being. There’s a vague sense of entitlement in the way she expects her friends’ help at a moment’s notice. She doesn’t seem particularly grateful to two different families who offer her a place to stay indefinitely, leaving without saying goodbye and at one point flicking a cigarette butt on the street outside someone’s house. The worst part, though, comes when Fern and a friend stop at one of the West’s truly deplorable roadside attractions, where they take their turn with other tourists gawking at a full-grown alligator held captive in an enclosure only slightly larger than an average bedroom closet, forced to live in a small puddle of water barely two inches high. They laugh while the poor animal is fed his daily meal. “Look at that fearsome creature flopping around, desperately trying to survive!” they might as well have said. Like much of Nomadland, this is a real place and not a fictional creation, but neither Fern, McDormand, nor certainly Zhao appear to realize they are witnessing an act of torture. The scene is played strictly for laughs — a blithe palette cleanser in an otherwise bummer of a movie. If you had any doubt about Fern’s insensitivity to anyone’s plight but her own, this scene is basically repeated a few minutes later, this time with a boa constrictor playing the helpless creature conscripted for human entertainment. Hey, Chloe Zhao: If you want my heart to bleed for your downtrodden protagonist, maybe don’t make her such a dick.
The Trial of the Chicago Seven
This film depicts one of the seminal events of the 1960s, the lengthy trial of a group of anti-war activists accused of conspiring to start a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. That scene was one of the most iconic images of the decade, as police rushed and clubbed demonstrators while television cameras rolled and the protesters shouted “The Whole World is Watching!” No cameras were allowed at the trial, however, consigning that episode to the dusty record of newspapers and history books. That’s where Aaron Sorkin comes in. Hollywood’s crown prince of limousine liberals has made a highly fictionalized dramatization of the trial, with big-name actors playing major counterculture figures like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, David Dellinger, and William Kunstler. What results is an entertaining courtroom potboiler, a film that would make a fine piece of fiction it not for the pesky matter of reality. Here are just some of the many facts that are twisted or entirely manufactured in Sorkin’s film:
— The government’s lead prosecutor is depicted as sympathetic at times to the defendants. Not true.
— The demonstrators are shown charging at the police in Chicago’s Grant Park. This is the opposite of what actually happened.
— Rubin is shown saving a female protester from a rape. This did not happen.
— He’s also shown getting his heart broken by a female FBI informant who leads him on romantically. It’s true that a sizable percentage of Chicago protesters were undercover agents, and Rubin apparently was tailed by a female agent. But to imply that a savvy, hardened activist like him — who was in a committed relationship at the time — would behave in such a stupid and immature manner at the most critical moment of the anti-war movement he’d devoted his life to doesn’t pass the smell test.
— The judge’s infamous order to have Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom is depicted as a brief affair that lasts all of 10 minutes. In reality, Seale was bound and gagged for three full days of testimony, and the whole episode was far more impactful than the film makes it seem.
— Chicago Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton is shown regularly attending the trial and providing advice to Seale. This did not happen.
— Dellinger, a noted pacifist, is shown punching a bailiff in court. Never happened.
— The film’s rousing finale, when Hayden is permitted to make a closing statement on behalf of the defendants and reads the names of every American killed in Vietnam up to that point, also never happened. Dellinger tried to read the names earlier in the trial, but the judge cut him off.
Other transgressions are less substantial, but still eat away at the film’s credibility. Characters utter conversational asides that certainly weren’t in use at the time, such as “Zing!” and “Right?” — a sin committed by too many contemporary period films. Mark Ryland’s passive, avuncular portrayal of Kunstler is way off-base too: The real Kunstler was famously pugnacious in court and in the media, as much an alpha male as any of his younger clients. Perhaps worst of all is the film’s portrayal the relationship between Hayden and Hoffman (an excellent Sasha Baron-Cohen). It’s true Hayden had some issues with the showy tactics Hoffman and Rubin used to get publicity for the cause, but Sorkin overplays this angle badly. For a large part of the movie Hayden is depicted as unceasingly dour, pissed off at every word out Hoffman’s mouth and every one of Kunstler’s legal maneuvers. One almost gets the sense he’d be more comfortable at the prosecution table. It doesn’t help that Hayden is played by Eddie Redmayne, an actor who looks like he never met a party he wouldn’t call the cops on. Viewers who don’t know the story will no doubt sense that some of this stuff is contrived, but the greater danger is that they’ll think some of the true parts are made up, too. The notorious bias of the judge, Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), for instance, will likely strike viewers as exaggerated, but that’s one of the few things Sorkin gets right. Hoffman really was that bad. History is far more important than Hollywood dress-up games, and keeping up with this film’s endless distortions was both exhausting and distracting. I find Sorkin in contempt of the truth.
Mank
This promised to be a welcome blast of old-style Hollywood glamour. Its grievance seems almost quaint in 2020’s sea of intranquility, depicting how the washed-up screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz managed to write 1941’s Citizen Kane, then nearly lost out on getting a screen credit. Director David Fincher completed this project from a script written by his late father that sat around for years. The film’s opening minutes suggest that Fincher might try to match the visual style of Kane itself, but he wisely gives up on that pursuit and we’re left with the somewhat less novel concept of a story about the 1930s told in black and white. The film employs a flashback narrative, beginning with Mank laid up with a broken leg as he embarks upon writing Kane before shifting to his disillusionment with the studios over an incident in the 1934 California gubernatorial campaign. This comprises the bulk of the film, but knowing how it all turns out robs viewers of any suspense, and keeps the film from accumulating any momentum. The cynical paternalism and self-interested politics of men like Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, and William Randolph Hearst is well-worn territory, and the Finchers don’t have anything fresh to say about it. I could have used a lot more of Mank’s mentor/student relationship with Welles himself (an apparently excellent Tom Burke, though he’s given so little screen time one can’t be sure), and a whole lot more of the actual writing of Kane. Mank also commits a pretty horrid drive-by on John Houseman, depicting that great erudite impresario as a clueless toady for reasons that are utterly mystifying. Despite its hordes of acting talent and gorgeous production design, the whole thing just feels sort of “meh.” For a film by a supposedly great director about the greatest movie ever made, Mank is strangely artless. Oldman is great as usual as Mankiewicz, projecting the writer’s inherent decency in every scene. But now that the actual Herman Mankiewicz has received not only screen credit for Kane but an Academy Award, a widely read book devoted to his work (Pauline Kael’s “Raising Kane”) and an A-list feature film bio, is it safe to say he’s no longer forgotten?
Judas and the Black Messiah
The esteemed Mr. Popwell is on record with his admiration for Judas, and I hate to go against the boss, but I found this film to be a misfire on many levels. It depicts the FBI’s persecution of Fred Hampton, the young Chicago Black Panther leader who was killed in a 1969 police raid. The film’s decision to simultaneously tell Hampton’s story and that of William O’Neal, the thief-turned FBI informant who — perhaps unwittingly — helped set up the raid, is the first of its many mistakes. It tries to paint O’Neal as a victim of the same systemic racism that dooms Hampton — with Jesse Plemons’ G-man keeping him in the dark about the agency’s ultimate motives while offering him a chance to escape a prison term in exchange for infiltrating the Panthers — but I’m not buying it. O’Neal was a two-bit thief who deserved to go to prison for robbing some of the same people Hampton was trying to help. Casting an actor as likeable as Lakeith Stanfield as O’Neal ensures that viewers will sympathize with the rat when they should be focused on the hero (the real O’Neal committed suicide in 1990). Significant time is given to Hampton’s wife and other Black Panther colleagues and their mission to forge a self-sufficient community in the Chicago ghettos. It’s all worthy stuff, but the film’s paint-by-numbers approach keeps putting up roadblocks when it should be drawing us in. I almost expected title cards stating “This is the scene where the hero convinces the rival gang to join forces,” “this is the scene where the informant almost gets caught but doesn’t,” or “this is the scene where the wife tells the hero she’ll stick with him no matter what.” Director Shaka King and the film’s producers enlisted Hampton’s widow, son, and other survivors and gave them approval over the script, and it’s possible that such a committee approach hurt the finished product. I also had a problem with Daniel Kaluuya’s performance as Hampton. He’s far too smooth and self-assured, delivering his speeches with the relish of a trained actor, while the real Hampton bubbled with righteous anger and the frenetic energy of youth (he was only 21 when he died). Judas‘ final error, though, is the most fundamental one a film can make: It just doesn’t look good. Many scenes are lit too darkly, and the overall lighting, costume, and production design make for a drab, washed out color palette that’s rough on the eyes. It’s yet one more roadblock in a frustrating viewing experience. The story of Hampton and the Panthers is just beginning to be fully understood, however, and with today’s political climate one assumes it’s only a matter of time until we get new feature films about Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver too. I say bring ’em on.
Sound of Metal
Director Darius Marder’s film plays more like a ballad than a metal song, and a damn depressing one at that. Riz Ahmed stars as Ruben, the drummer in a modest two-person metal band. Ruben and his girlfriend, who’s also the band’s singer/guitarist, live in their comfy touring RV, until one day he suddenly loses his hearing. That moment is one of the best scenes in the film, but I wish Marder hadn’t placed it so soon after the opening credits. If he’d waited just a little longer we’d have a greater sense of the life Ruben is losing. As it is, both he and the audience are plunged too quickly into a freefall of disorienting despair. The bulk of the two-hour runtime concerns Ruben’s struggle to maintain a semblance of sanity and dignity while adjusting to his devastating handicap. Much of the action concerns his extended stay at a camp for the deaf that also doubles as an addiction recovery center. Ruben agrees to learn sign language and seems to be making a go of it at first, but the camp’s director eventually balks at his determination to pursue cochlear implants that might restore his hearing. “Deafness is not a handicap to be cured of,” the director insists, his authority clearly threatened by the prospect that anyone in his charge might actually get better. It’s the film’s sharpest moment — a stark indictment of the toxic co-dependence at the heart of much of rehab culture and a brutal emotional blow for Ruben, who simply doesn’t have a place in the world anymore. His girlfriend inevitably abandons him too, though not in any consciously cruel way: She’s just moved on. Ahmed is great in the film: He’s in every scene and he couldn’t be more sympathetic, but being trapped in his head for two hours is still a slog. Sound of Metal did make me grateful for my hearing, so I’ll give it that much, but I’m afraid the best movie about heavy metal remains This is Spinal Tap.
The Father
Director Florian Zeller’s film of his 2012 play tells the story of Anthony (the great Anthony Hopkins), a London man who’s beginning to lose his memory and his grip on reality at age 82 (or just a few years older than Joe Biden; just saying…). Anthony’s daughter Anne (Olivia Colman, splendid as always) has been caring for him in her expansive apartment, but when she meets a man and decides to move to Paris she and Anthony must confront the agonizing prospect of having him committed to a nursing home. Zeller plays with reality in ways I won’t spoil so that we see everything from Anthony’s point of view. It’s a simple but brutally effective way to tell the story, rendering every forgotten name or face not only plausible but deeply sympathetic. We’re squarely on Anthony’s side even as we know his battle is hopeless. The Father does feel a wee bit stage-bound, as many theater adaptations do. We get no flashbacks to a younger Anthony, and we never learn about his younger daughter, although it’s suggested that her premature death was the great tragedy of his life. But what is on the screen is magnetic and heartbreaking, including the aforementioned Colman, and Rufus Sewell playing another in his long line of cinema heels. Hopkins tuned up for this performance by playing literature’s most famous dementia sufferer in 2018’s King Lear for the BBC, and he’s as spectacular here as he’s ever been. Life’s randomness is cruel indeed: Alzheimer’s strikes so many with no explanation, while others can actually get better with age. Hopkins clearly belongs in the latter group — a blessing for him and for us.
Minari
Minari is about a family of Korean immigrants trying to find their American dream in the 1980s. The father, Jacob (an excellent Steven Yeun), has purchased a large plot of Arkansas land to farm Korean vegetables — correctly predicting the steady stream of Korean immigrants that will enter the United States in coming years. Jacob yearns to escape the hatchery where he and his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) toil away, separating baby chicks by gender so that the male chicks, useless for egg laying and not tasting good enough to eat, can be carted next door and ground up alive. But he’s beset by many burdens: The land he bought is stubbornly resistant to irrigation efforts, Monica is none too happy living in a house with wheels on it, and their 5-year-old son David (Alan S. Kim) has a heart condition that could threaten his life at any time. Minari picks up steam when Monica’s mother Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn) comes to live with the family. David is disillusioned that she’s “not a real grandma.” Raised on American TV, he’s expecting a cookie-baking Aunt Bee, not an acid-tongued, card-playing spitfire who eschews the kitchen and spends her days drinking Mountain Dew and watching pro wrestling on the tube. Their relationship supplies much of the fun of the film: Youn is the favorite to win best supporting actress and she’s good, but her performance wouldn’t work nearly as well without Kim, who taps into whatever alchemy allows certain child actors to steal our hearts on screen when they can’t possibly understand what the hell they’re doing. Minari is neither a bad film nor an exceptional one. It’s a nice story about a nice family with pretty relatable problems. Lee Isaac Chung wrote the semi-autobiographical script and he also directed the film, employing a straightforward but sure-handed style that emphasizes the grind and challenge of everyday life over the big showy moments most films pivot on. The Minari of the title refers to a Korean vegetable that requires little effort to grow but much patience, and it also serves as the film’s gentle metaphor for the Yi family — as Jacob observes in the film’s final line, “it’s growing well on its own.”
Promising Young Woman
Another in Hollywood’s recent line of “Men Are Bad” offerings (The Invisible Man, The Assistant, The Handmaid’s Tale), Promising Young Woman stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie, who we first meet while she’s drunkenly accepting a man’s offer to drive her home from a bar. When he takes her to his place instead and tries to maul her despite a clear lack of consent, she sobers up and leaves under her own power, revealing her impairment to be a ruse and hopefully teaching the guy a valuable lesson. Cassie does this with regularity: It turns out she’s never been the same since her best friend Nina was raped at a party in med school as other male students watched and laughed. The promising young woman of the title thus refers to both Nina and Cassie herself, who quit school after the rapist got off scot-free and has lived with her parents ever since, stuck in a dead-end job and unable to date or make new friends. At the coffee shop where she works we see her rudely blow off a customer who innocently asks for a cup of joe. This happens in front of her boss (an annoyingly smug Laverne Cox), who merely shoots her a look as if to say, “That’s our Cassie!” (I wonder how charming writer/director Emerald Fennell would find this behavior when she’s getting her morning coffee.) It’s a telling detail that plagues the rest of the film, which like its main character succumbs to an acute self-righteousness, allowing the outrage of the rape to excuse all manner of subsequent misbehavior. When Ryan (comedian/actor/director Bo Burnham), an old classmate of Cassie’s and now a pediatrician, wanders into the coffee shop one day and asks her out, the movie’s idea of cute dialogue is to have Cox jokingly ask if he’s killed any babies. I doubt any pediatrician who’s actually had a child die on the table would consider this an amusing or even socially acceptable thing to say, but Ryan laughs along — even after admitting that yes, he has had patients die in surgery. Cassie starts dating Ryan, who’s depicted as what I can only assume is the millennial female’s fantasy of the perfect man — a tall, handsome young doctor who’s somehow unattached, shy yet witty in a Hugh Grant kind of way, caring and attentive to a fault, he dances and sings along to a Paris Hilton tune in the middle of a store and generally behaves like no male human ever. It’s later revealed that Ryan was actually one of the guys laughing at the rape, and when confronted he proves every bit as callous as the others.
Cassie eventually tracks down the rapist from years ago and begins plotting her revenge. Along the way, she roofies another woman who was friends with Nina and dismissed her rape claim, letting her think she might have been raped too so she’ll have more sympathy. She pays a thug to beat up the rapist’s lawyer, only backing off in the movie’s most befuddling scene when the attorney — a ridiculous Alfred Molina — blubbers a fulsome apology for basically doing his job, something no lawyer would or should ever do. We root for Cassie when she’s sticking it to some creep in a bar, and we certainly want the rapist to be killed or imprisoned, but this film wants us to sign off on her toxic martyrdom as a given, as if she has no agency over her own life because of what happened to her friend. There’s a good movie to made about the slippery moral slope of devoting one’s life to revenge, but Fennell isn’t interested in those ideas. If we weren’t in this moment of feminist reckoning, this film would have never found itself in the best picture category, and it certainly doesn’t belong here. It’s a vigilante movie, plain and simple, and I don’t remember Death Wish getting any Oscar nominations.
And the winner is…
Nomadland. It’s been the betting favorite for months, and neither of its two closest competitors — Minari and Trial of the Chicago 7 — appear to have the juice to pull off a late-closing upset in the manner of 2016’s Moonlight or last year’s Parasite. It’s also won almost all the other best picture awards (with two notable exceptions: New York film critics opted for Kelly Reichardt’s feminist western First Cow, while their Los Angeles counterparts were far bolder in picking Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, a series of five films about immigration in the 1980s made for British television). This will be just the second best picture winner directed by a woman, after 2004’s The Hurt Locker. The Academy’s virtue-signaling voters will no doubt feel like they’ve made a “brave” choice honoring this overrated and over-earnest snoozefest, but as I’ve written in this space before, it will hardly be the first time they’ve picked the wrong film.
Leave a Reply