“Nomadsland” - have you seen this Film?

I’ve watched Nomadland at the cinema this morning.
I was captivated from the first minutes.
You get the feeling of the vast desert, how diminutive we are, how we can achieve more by banding together with like-minded people.
They had very little materially, but they helped each other, welcomed newcomers to their camps and listened to each other’s stories - all different - of how they came to be there.
It has provoked thoughts in me about how life and death can be viewed differently.
If you believe in afterlife you will believe that departed loved ones are not lost to us forever, we will meet again “just along the (metaphorical) road”.
I was enchanted.

I’ve booked my seat at the cinema and am looking forward to it.

I’ve often been disappointed in a film but never been disappointed by a documentary. So a feature film that’s like a documentary should suit me down to the ground. Annoyingly Nomadland was OOS on our Tesco’s delivery yesterday and I was really looking forward to seeing it.

Very underwhelming, nothing shocked or surprised me about this film. Frances Mcdormand is the Star, and i found her irritating

That’s an excellent review Silverbridge.
Imagine bein old, poor, living in a trailer/car/van with no pro-er health care. The land of the free?

Thank you all for your comments.
I will come back to the thread when I have seen it (at the end of this month).

I saw it, and thought it was good, but it brought home to me how lifestyles like this can seem romantic and all about freedom, but the reality is precarious and often dangerous.

I would hate it.

I thought the Fern character was interesting. She was 'untypical' before she took to the road, and had only settled down in the first place because of her love for her husband, but it also struck me how sad it was that after years of working as a teacher and in HR she was considered unemployable because of her age, and how quickly people can go from relative security and status to nothing when there is no safety net.

I watched it with friends, and we also drew parallels with the dustbowl era, but felt that there was a difference between the way in which people like Woody Guthrie (and to some extent the young Bob Dylan) were portrayed - more footloose than homeless, and the way the people in the film had little or no choice but to live as they did.

I liked the docudrama format, and the way they used actual nomads to tell their stories.

I loved it. I saw it at the cinema and definitely think it needs a big screen. It’s not an ‘action’ film but, for me, that doesn’t make it boring. As Iam64 says, it has echoes of the 1930s and the dust bowl as described unforgettably by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath, though, thankfully, the nomads are not starving in the way that families with young children did then (not saying that there aren’t people going hungry of course).

I will be interested to see your comments when you’ve seen it Tilly

I am a big Frances McDormand fan. Anyone expecting another fiery performance like the one which won her an Oscar as Best Actress in 3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, may have been disappointed. Unusual film but showed the transient life of the campervan nomad very well.

An utterly brilliant five-star docu-film featuring actors and real-life nomads.

It's based on Jessica Bruder's book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century and the real-life story of Empire, a company town owned by the US Gypsum Corporation which closed the factory and the whole town in 2011 following the economic crash of 2008. This forced the elderly who couldn't afford to retire or maintain a bricks and mortar home into camper vans moving around to find seasonal work.

Added to this, Frances McDormand's character, Fern, carries the sorrow of bereavement following the death of her beloved husband (who died before she took to the road).

It's a tale of hard work, adaptation, resilience, loneliness and companionship plus some magnificent scenery which must look great on the big screen. I watched it at home where it can be rented from Amazon Prime for £3.99.

Guardian review here:

www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/11/nomadland-review-frances-mcdormand-chloe-zhao

Moving and insightful. I loved it.

I watched it and regret that I’ll never get that time back lol

The premise was good but I agree it was more documentary than film.

I agree that it was 90 minutes of misery. More like a documentary I thought.

I thought it was very interesting. I wouldn't mind traveling for a while so I was interested in how it all worked.

Sago

Acting is outstanding, overall the film was just 90 minutes of misery.

I can live without that then !!

Acting is outstanding, overall the film was just 90 minutes of misery.

Frances McDormand is a very good, natural, actor. It's a fascinating look at a side of America which we don't often see.
I was interested because I had a taste of a camper van lifestyle, on and off, for several years.
I must admit that I did find the film a little tedious in places though.

Brilliant cast, which includes real life people who life as American nomads, in their cars.
Frances McDormand is the lead actor and one of the producers. It’s a disturbing film that reflects how the US is failing. I felt Woody Guthrie would have made a good musical backdrop. These people were in similar place as the dust owl refugees

Quite boring!

Sorry I meant 25Avalon.