I browse through some old posters in a rack while my friend is queuing for drinks. Then I stop and look around the foyer. On every single object I lie my eyes on I see reflected the joy of acknowledging my physical presence in a cinema, and it feels great.
A few minutes later we sink in a familiar obscurity, but it only takes the time to read the opening card to be transported from the beautiful screening room of the Phoenix into a far less inviting place, and darker. An unfriendly metallic clatter breaks the murky silence. Frances McDormand opens a garage door letting a desolate brightness in. Quite a metaphor after over a year of pandemic captivity. I breathe the snow in like I could smell the cold, maybe I can. So, I think, this is the film everybody’s been talking about for months.
Watching Nomadland I couldn’t help contemplating what a stoical cinematic achievement it is to have shot a film like that. At the same time, I won’t lie, it felt a bit like watching a great film I have already seen. Even Frances McDormand seemed to me like giving a masterly performance she has already given. Maybe that’s because of how all the elements perfectly fit, or maybe because of how familiar are the emotions Chloé Zhao so tactfully captures. After all Nomadland is not a film about loss and absence, but rather one about what’s left, about presence, and the present. Again, quite timely so.
