FILMS
NOMADLAND Chloé Zhao will soon have a blockbuster hit on her hands with the Marvel superhero film Eternals. Let’s hope that it does extremely well, so that it enables the Beijing-born filmmaker to continue making the kind of insightful realist pictures she’s sublimely good at, such as 2017’s The Rider and now Nomadland, for which Zhao was recently crowned Best Director at the 2021 Golden Globes. The Rider was a powerfully spare drama about the South Dakota rodeo world; Nomadland explores similar terrain, again working with non-professionals to explore a largely unseen dimension of contemporary American life.
This time, however, Zhao has a well-known lead, Frances McDormand. She plays Fern, from a Nevada town that has effectively shut down along with its gypsum plant. Fern sells her possessions, buys a van and joins the multitude of
