Directed by Chloe Zhao says that he intentionally removed from the book of Jessica Bromer 2017 "The Earth of Nomads: Survive in America of the XXI century", which took off his film, all social criticism.
Bruder made a serious job, talking to the Americans left without houses after the 2008 crisis and forced to work on ungrateful temporary work. According to statistics, over the past 30 years, 1% of America's richest people has become richer, while 50% of the poorest began to earn two times less. But the "land of nomads", although the stories have lost all the people who have lost all people, will not begone (in any case in the forehead) modern inhuman capitalism and digital economy. "If I took a drama with social criticism," says Zhao, "in my homeland in China, the audience would consider the problems of my heroes purely American. I wanted to make a film about universal situations and experiences. "
She more than it succeeded. The action of the "nomad land" occurs in 2011, when in the town with bitterly ironic name Empire, Nevada, the plant, which fed the locals. After the death of her husband's former teacher Fern (Francis McDormand may well get for this role the third "Oscar") changes his awesome life on a van (during the filming of the film Zhao and McDermand themselves lived in such vans for four months) and go to the neighboring states In search of temporary work. In his concealed voluntary Odyssey, she meets other people who are in the same position as she. Almost everyone is playing real nomads, except for the actor David Stretern, whose hero is fond of Fern and even offers her to return to the old "normal" life in a house with churars and a dog.
The move with the lack of in the frame, except for two actors (and what!), Other professionals are one of the most successful finds Zhao. McDormand seems to be a conductor from a fictional drama with its laws of the genre into the real world of documentary truth. People appearing on the screen tell their unseen stories - one of the fellow Fern is sick with cancer, she remained to live for several months, and we are not an actress before us, but a real person who will really die by the end of the film.
Of course, the film would not work if not only the participation of McDermannd, who became not only the producer of the "land of nomads", but also a full co-author in working on the creation of Fern (she even worked in Amazon warehouse, packing parcels on a par with other employees of the company). McDormand is so devoid of superficial acting, not to mention the star, ambitions (critic The New Yorker Anthony Lane joked that she would come to the office of Oscar in croces), which uses her the director to her to create a hero, as if merging not only With fellow travelers on the road of life. Zhao shows Fern with a thoughtful lonely with an American deep landscape who spread over her, which makes the land of nomads not only Road Movie, but also a little western, only instead of cowboys and the Indians here, in great "nowhere", are Amazon's hangars, in the parking lot Which you can leave your van and sleep.
"Earth of nomads" (in cinemas from March 11) became the most awarded film of the year. Starting from the "Golden Lion" at the Venetian Film Festival in September, he received several dozen prizes and four nominations for the Golden Globe, "Oscar". Since the "parasites" of Korean Pon Zhong Ho received "Oscar", passed only a year, and because of the pandemic it seems that eternity. But the southeastern invasion of Hollywood was not so much since the days of Eng. Something apparently, there is in national schools of southeastern countries that their representatives can take a fresh look at the traditionally American genres like Western and give the "hump hill" or, as in the case of Chloe Zhao, the "land of nomads". Perhaps this is the ability to make a purely American genre universal. Therefore, it is not surprising that almost simultaneously with the "land of nomads", Zhao worked on the new head of Marvel "Eternal", which should take the baton at the Avengers, another purely American genre - Kinokomix.
But in the "land of nomads" there is nothing from the commercial conventions of the Hollywood blockbuster. Travel Fern in America seems to be a universal metaphor of life itself, which can not stand still, if only because it is so arranged. In the view of the "civilized" person with a mortgage and career, the heroes of "nomad land" seem losers. But if you look more wider, it can, it is this life in constant motion is more natural in the world who manage time and change, and not economic situation and money. Zhao constantly shows the Fern one, standing on the plain, and behind the back of the beautiful fire sunset. It is possible to decide that she is anxiously peering in the coming night. Or, on the contrary, it is conducive to pacification from awareness of his own freedom. Or maybe we have before us to preserve this very freedom of a person who consciously turned away from the values of the civilization crazy.
Photo: Disney Studios