Beginning with the debut work "The Song My Brother Taught Me to Sing", the director prefers the same creative method, implanting fictional characters and narratives in the structure of the documentary . This new work is exactly the same as "Knight". It selects a core character, observes the surrounding environment and characters through its point of view, and interacts with it; however, this time it is a completely fictional character, so the difficulty of the script has increased. It is necessary to maintain the spontaneity of the characters, but also to create a little drama inadvertently.
The fusion of document and fiction is not ideal here, which is inseparable from the heroine Francis McDormand . This Cannes and Oscar-winning actor is beyond doubt in terms of acting skills, but when she is on the same scene with real people, it is easy to see that she is "acting". Her academic performance is a bit out of tune with amateur actors, with an undisguised embarrassment that makes the film reveal the intent of a genre experiment.
The first half of the scene where the heroine talks to the nomads is like a recorded interview clip in a different way, but the director hides the interviewer and lets the heroine forcefully intervene in reality as a fictional character, allowing the real nomads Tell your own story. The director doesn't seem to have been able to find a secret recipe for Iranian master Abbas's blurring of the real/fiction boundary, and some passages look like a naive version of Jia Zhangke's work ("The Three Gorges Good Man").
Compared with the experimental consciousness of outlining and depicting the characteristics of nomadic groups through the perspective of the heroine in the first half, the fictional plot focusing on the heroine herself in the second half is obviously smoother, whether it is her one-man show or her relationship with professional actors. Several of David Strathairn's scenes returned to the traditional Hollywood performance category, and it was only at this time that the actress' acting skills showed a strong appeal .
The audience may not understand the true mentality of each nomad, as we see that their backgrounds and experiences are different, but this fictional character under the director's camera is very convincing to me. The script spends a lot of ink to describe the background of the economic crisis. The deteriorating environment and unemployment problems are undoubtedly the direct external causes. In the past year, the whole world has been hit by the epidemic. The background of this story will make more hearts and minds. Yan. This point is believed to be unexpected by the director, because the filming of the film was completed long before the outbreak of the epidemic.
In my opinion, it's not just the economic crisis, but the more important reason is that the heroine's nostalgia for and memories of her deceased husband made her unable to face her lover's departure, and instead chose to try a nomadic life. From many details in the film, we can see that she is not poor and unaccompanied. As she said, " I am not homeless, I just don't have a house ", at least she is completely different from most nomads different mentality. As a result, the focus of the film gradually turned to the protagonist learning how to say goodbye to his loved ones and how to resolve the obsession in his heart.
In the open ending, it is unknown whether the heroine will become a real nomad, but through this experience of living in an RV, she must have overcome the initial negative and depressed emotions. In this film, the director transitions from a nomad's interview record to a (fictional) character study, trying to find the intersection between the nomad's values and the themes he wants to express. Although it was an imperfect attempt, this creative direction proved her directorial sophistication.
View more about Nomadland reviews
