NOMADLAND: 4 ½ STARS A blend of fiction and non-fiction, “Nomadland,” the melancholy new Frances McDormand drama, is a timely story of a woman who learns to adapt and survive after losing everything she held dear. Just as Fern (McDormand) cuts herself off from the norms of regular society, “Nomadland” is not tied to traditional storytelling structures. Its unhurried 107-minute running time is leisurely, not plot driven, but utterly compelling. Director Chloé Zhao follows the widowed Fern as she leaves Empire, Nev., a small company town now bleeding residents after the closure of the U.S. Gypsum Corporation factory. So many people have fled to greener pastures that the post office discontinued the local zip code.
Boogie Each generation has a defining high school basketball picture to call its own (
One on One, Love and Basketball, Above the Rim, etc.). The dialogue may coarsen, the off-court violence intensify, and the ethnicity of its lead may fluctuate over time, but the events outlined in the narrative basically remain the same, right down to the differing parents, compulsory teen love angle, and/or championship games that closes each picture. Not having seen the poster, at what point do we know this is a coming of age story? Just before Boogie’s (Taylor Takahashi) English teacher assigns
Catcher in the Rye, he informs his class that each student is currently inhabiting their own coming-of-age story. But as far as temperamental Boogie and his contemporaries can tell, Asians are second-class citizens living in a country steeped in resentment. He seconds the rancor of his parent’s generation: his people have earned their place in the kitchen or behind an accountant’s desk, but whe