McDormand says more with a squint of her eyes and a shift in posture than most actors can with an entire monologue. Fern is temperamental, hilarious, kind, intelligent, but–above all– real.

It should be immediately stated that McDormand’s work here is some of the best of her career, and it seems only a monumental performance from Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman will be what keeps McDormand from a third Oscar win for Best Actress. Packing the rest of her life into a van, she sets off, and the film follows a year of her life on the road. The story opens with Fern (Frances McDormand) bidding a teary farewell to a storage unit garage in the snowy Nevada countryside. Thankfully, Nomadland is everything you’ve heard, yet so much more. It’s easy to see how this film might have a tough time living up to the hype. Zhao became the second woman ever to win the Golden Globe for Best Director, and it will all culminate in an Academy Awards ceremony next month that has her poised to take home up to four Oscars– the most ever for a woman. It went on to clean up awards with film critic groups around the country. It started awards season by becoming the first film ever to win the top prize at both the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, and it’s been making history ever since. In the last few months, Nomadland has become the most acclaimed film of 2020. Frances McDormand and Director/Writer Chloé Zhao on the set of ‘Nomadland.’ Photo: Joshua James Richards Hopes were suitably high for her follow up, an adaptation of Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction novel that chronicles the phenomenon of older Americans traveling the American West and looking for work in the wake of the Great Recession. At this point, going into Nomadland with tempered expectations seems like an exercise in futility.Ĭhloé Zhao made waves with The Rider in 2017, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival and went on to be one of the year’s most acclaimed films.

Nomadland novel