Category: Winners – 2020s

Oppenheimer – 2023

There is a lot to say about Oppenheimer.  It was a very good movie, and I can see why it was nominated for Best Picture.  I can understand why it won.  It was a dramatized biopic about the career of the man who was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the first nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.  It was an event that had an effect on the course of human history, and thus, he was a man who literally changed the world forever in ways that, even now, we might not be able to foresee.  It looked at his personal relationships, his professional relationships, and his involvement in events that changed the world in both bad and good ways.  He was a brilliant theoretical physicist, and at times, a complicated and tortured man.  In other words, he was the perfect subject for the creation of a Best Picture winning movie.

Oppenheimer was nominated for twelve Academy Awards, and took home seven.  Most notable, Christopher Nolan won for Best Director, Cillian Murphy won for Best Actor, and Robert Downey Jr. won for Best Supporting Actor.  The film also took home Oscars for Cinematography, Film Editing, and Best Original Score.  The nominations it didn’t win were for Emily Blunt in the Best Supporting Actress category, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, and Best Sound.  That’s a pretty impressive list.

As seems to be the trend in recent years, the story was told nonlinearly.  It kept jumping back and forth between three plot lines.  The main story was that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Murphy, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the nuclear weapons.  This story, which began in 1926, followed a fairly linear path, but it was intercut with scenes from the 1959 Senate Confirmation hearings of Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss, who, as depicted by the film, was secretly a rival of Oppenheimer, seeking revenge for professional and personal sleights, both real and imagined, and a private security hearing in front of a Personnel Security Board concerning Oppenheimer’s Q clearance, in which his loyalty to America was questioned.  It is later revealed that this hearing was orchestrated by Admiral Strauss, in order to discredit Oppenheimer.

The main story was filmed in color, while the senate hearings that took place later were in black and white.  Director Christopher Nolan, who also won the Best Director Oscar, said that this was to tell a more objective story from a different character’s perspective.  But I think this device also served to more firmly separate the stories that were being told simultaneously.  Each of the three plot-lines were interesting in their own right, and I’d bet that each of them could have made an interesting film by themselves.  But the way that Nolan spliced them together, with ideas and revelations that overlapped and had relevance across the board, was absolutely brilliant.

Interesting note: Many critics have called Oppenheimer a masterpiece.  It has been lauded as the best of the director’s films.  To quote Wikipedia, “Steven Soderbergh said of the film, ‘Oppenheimer is a real accomplishment. I read somewhere that Chris [Nolan] implied that this is the movie he’s been building toward, and I think he’s right. And I’m thrilled that it’s a massive hit.’”

I think it is fair to say that not only did the film tell an interesting story in an incredibly entertaining way, but it also had a certain amount of historical and social relevance.  It was almost a cautionary tale about the dangers of opening a Pandora’s Box.  What are the moral consequences of creating such a devastating device as a nuclear bomb?  Did it save more lives than it destroyed?  And what would the creation of such a lethal device do to the psyche of the man who developed it?  And was Oppenheimer, the man, the scientist, to be praised for his work, or condemned for it?

That’s where the real drama of the movie came out, and the fantastic cast really stepped up to the plate.  That’s why three members of the cast were nominated for acting awards, and why two of them won.  In the lead was Cillian Murphy, playing the title character.  Not only did he look like the real man he was portraying, but he nailed the pathos of the character, bringing out the inner workings of the mind of the man, from the way he behaved, to the way he reacted to the events in which he was participating.  Even when he was saying nothing, Murphy allowed us to hear what Oppenheimer was thinking, with his posture, his eyes, his facial expressions. 

Robert Downey Jr. has had a long career, a problem with drugs and run-ins with the law that ruined him professionally, and a comeback that turned him into one of the highest-payed and most sought after actors of his generation.  Most people today know him from his work as Iron Man in the MCU franchise, a role that has effectively ended. But here he proves, yet again, how good an actor he really is.  But I have to note the similarities between his role here as Admiral Strauss and Tony Stark.  Both characters are rich and powerful in their fields.  They both have an ego that often gets the better of them.  But as Strauss, Downey brought out a pettiness and a vindictiveness Stark didn’t possess.  The movie almost portrays Strauss as a behind-the-scene villain, the unapologetic Salieri to Oppenheimer’s Mozart.

Then there were the two leading ladies of the movie, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt.  Blunt played Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, Pugh, his mistress, Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist and member of the Communist Party USA, who committed suicide after Oppenheimer ended his relationship with her.  They both did a great job, but Blunt stood out more, simply because her character carried a more significant portion of the film’s drama.  She played the woman behind the man, the one who supported him and occasionally had to push him onto the path she knew he had to follow.  She gave us Kitty’s sense of guilt for her own part in her husband’s creation, and her clear respect for his genius, which sometimes seemed to border on fear.  Blunt really gave us a fantastic performance.

And there were even more big names in the cast, names like Matt Damon, who played General Leslie Groves, the military officer who was the director of the Manhattan Project.  He was hard and staunch in proper military fashion, and Damon did an amazing job.  There was Josh Hartnett, Casey Afleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, James D’Arcy, Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Modine, and even a single memorable scene with Gary Oldman playing President Harry S. Truman.  They all did a great job.

For me, I think Ehrenreich and Clarke both really stood out.  The former played Admiral Strauss’ Senate aide, who, when Strauss’ true motives were revealed, began to turn against his boss.  It must have been difficult for him to play all his scenes against Robert Downey Jr., who was at the top of his game, but he really stepped up to the plate and did a fine job.  The latter played Roger Robb, the main interrogator in the private security hearing, who was appointed by Strauss, with the agenda of discrediting Oppenheimer.  He was particularly good in the scene where he questions Kitty.  She was great in that scene, too!

Interesting Note:  Another paraphrased quote from Wikipedia: “The casting process was so secretive that some cast members did not know which role they would be playing until they signed on.  Downey, Damon, and Blunt took pay cuts, with each earning only $4 million in lieu of their usual $10–20 million salary.  Downey would later describe Oppenheimer as “the best film” in which he has appeared to date.  When Blunt was offered the role of Kitty, she enthusiastically accepted, then contacted Murphy to ask what working with Nolan would be like.  Damon was taking a break from acting as a result of negotiations with his wife in couples therapy, but signed on to Oppenheimer as he had reserved one exception: if Nolan offered him a role in a film.”

Now I have to mention the film’s score.  Composer Ludwig Göransson put together a score that was both structured and fluid at the same time.  There was music that created tension, even in scenes that shouldn’t have any because we all know, historically, what was going to happen.  There were passages of the score that reminded me vaguely of the music of Phillip Glass.  There were repeating circular patterns of counterpoint that were perfect for setting moods for the scenes, and building a sense of expectation that was so effective.  I am glad that Göransson took home the Oscar for Best Original Score.  He deserved it.

As with all movies that are based on real events, I like to do a little reading to determine just how accurate the film was.  In the case of Oppenheimer, I am happy to report that it was apparently quite accurate.  The differences were subtle. An embellishment here, an omission there, a changed character here, an altered reaction there.  For example, President Truman did indeed call Oppenheimer a crybaby, but it was in a letter at a later time, not directly after his meeting with the scientist, and within earshot as he exited the Oval Office.

But aside from those small things, Nolan, who wrote the screenplay, remained very true to the real events of the story.  It was based on a book about Oppenheimer by authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, called American Prometheus, Prometheus being the Greek figure who stole Fire from the Gods and gave it to mankind.  I’ve no doubt that the film’s historical accuracy went a long way to impress the Academy voters.

Something else I found fascinating were the film’s visual effects.  Nolan is known for his preference for practical effects instead of CGI effects, something I happen to agree with.  I have no problem with CGI, as it has gotten to a point where most computer generated imagery looks perfectly real.  It’s so good that most of the time you don’t even see it or recognize that it is a digital effect.  But I have a respect for filmmakers that find creative ways to create in-camera illusions.  If executed properly, they have a solidity to them that, at times, even perfectly executed CGI effects don’t seem to have.  And I am impressed by the cleverness and ingenuity it takes to make them work.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the first test of a nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert.  Again, we all know that the test was successful, but it was interesting how Nolan was able to put us all into the event, like we were more than just an audience.  We were participants.  The excitement, the hopefulness, the fear, of what was being done, and why.  The cuts between the different groups of people watching the test, the music, and the persistent countdown, made for a masterfully crafted scene.  And when the explosion came, the music stopped and the fire and destruction is seen in near absolute silence.  All we can hear is quiet breaths from the observers.

The silence lasted for a full minute as we see the explosion from different angles. Finally, we hear a note from the orchestra creep into the texture of the scene.  After another thirty seconds, we hear Oppenheimer quote, “And now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”  About a minute and forty seconds after the initial detonation, we finally hear the boom and see the mushroom cloud in all its terrible glory.  The tension was released and we all reveled in the success of the test.  But we also feel a certain amount of guilt because we know that the genie is now out of the bottle, and can never be put back inside.

Interesting note:  Digital compositing was used for the Trinity scene to add multi-layers to the explosion which was shot in a multifaceted viewpoint. though the explosion itself, was done as a practical effect.

Because the film was a biopic of Oppenheimer’s career, it also had to deal with the times in which he lived.  It explored the social implications of both Soviet and US Communism, the threat of WWII, the arms race with Nazi scientists who were also attempting to develop nuclear weapons, and the inevitable slippery slope that turned into the Cold War with the Soviets.  And then it dealt with the national political backlash of Oppenheimer’s work and his legacy.  Oppenheimer did what he had to do, but how was he treated once he had done it?

But when it comes down to it, it was just an enjoyable film to watch.  I’m not generally interested in historical biographies, but Nolan put it together in such a way as to make it engaging.  It was a story that held my interest for the entire three hour run-time.  He, and the incredible cast of actors did a great job of making the dry subject matter seem palatable.  It was a slice of history about which I didn’t know I needed to know. 

And both critics and audiences agree.  The film had a box-office take of over $964 million on a production budget of only $100 million.  That in itself is pretty impressive.  And some regard the film as not only the best picture of the year, but as one of the best and most important films of the century.  I don’t know if that’s true or not.  What I do know is that I enjoyed the movie from beginning to end, and I think it really deserved all the accolades and awards it has been given.

CODA – 2021

Well, another year of fantastic movies has come and gone, and another film has taken the top prize.  This year, it is a smaller, more intimate film.  It is a bit of a niche film, focusing on a very small group of people who, like all minorities deserve to have representation and a voice.  That group is actually named in the title of the film.  CODA is an acronym that stands for child of deaf adults.  So it is appropriate that the film is a coming-of-age story about a girl who can hear being raised in a completely deaf household.

Interesting topic?  Sure, why not?  But powerful or deep? Not particularly.  There was never much conflict in the film, so the victories were never too sweet, nor were the defeats too traumatic.  The young girl’s name is Ruby, played by Emilia Jones.  She grows up in a loving household with loving parents, Frank and Jackie, wonderfully played by Troy Kotsur and the always amazing Marlee Matlin.  She even gets along with her supportive brother, Leo, played by Daniel Durant.

There were only three other characters in the movie that really affected the plot.  First was Gertie, Ruby’s best friend, played by Amy Forsyth.  Next was Miles, Ruby’s love interest, played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo.  And finally, there was Bernardo Villalobos, Ruby’s choir teacher, played by Eugenio Derbez, otherwise known as Mr. V.  So the cast was small, the drama was small, and the story itself was small…  I’m sorry, but if I was an Academy voter, I wouldn’t have voted for CODA.  I mean, as a film, it was good, but I don’t think it was great.

It just didn’t have enough power.  Now, I know, power is not a necessity for a Best Picture winner.  There have been other small films that have taken home the Oscar for Best Picture, that were completely deserving.  But now that I’ve seen all the other movies that were nominated this year, I think I would have voted for King Richard.  It was just a more engaging movie.  CODA was too mild, too predictable, and just too small.  But I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t enjoy the movie, because I did.  I just enjoyed the other film more.

So what was it about CODA that earned it the Best Picture Award?  Well, for one thing, it was the positive representation of the deaf characters.  When most of us think of deaf people, we think of them as being handicapped, almost putting them on the same level as blind people, people who have a certain level of difficulty functioning in normal society.  But CODA, while it is really Ruby’s story, is almost more about showing the audience how normal, functional, independent, self-sufficient, and capable deaf families really are.  There were times in the film where Ruby’s story, the main plot of the film, felt almost secondary, as if the film was about this deaf family and the difficulties they faced, instead of a coming-of-age movie.  And I don’t think that was intentional.  Fortunately, that didn’t happen too often, but it did happen.

In a mild little twist to the overall narrative, Ruby, whose parents and brother are deaf, finds that she has talent as a singer.  As she learns to develop her talent, she starts to learn that she can have a life outside of being her family’s interpreter, their connection with the speaking world.  As a result, she feels torn between her loyalty to her family who depends on her, and her desire to become her own person.

One of the most interesting things in the film was a scene where Ruby is trying to express her love of singing to her mother, who is dismissive of Ruby’s feelings.  Jackie mistakenly sees Ruby as a daughter who is just being rebellious.  She even asks, “If I was blind, would you want to paint?”  As a mother, she doesn’t understand that her daughter’s aspirations are not about herself.  But again, the fight never got too intense.  It was a simple argument, and there was no schism in their relationship.

One of the themes in the movie was that Ruby had a difficult childhood.  The popular girls made fun of her because of her family.  But Ruby seemed to deal with them in a mature fashion, so no real conflict there.  Although, I did find it interesting to learn that many CODAs face a similar problem in school.  During their early years, they do not have parents who can teach them to speak.  They learn sign language, but when they make it to school, they can’t speak like the rest of the children.  I’ve never thought about that, but it makes sense.  Actually that might have made for a more interesting story, one about a CODA going through that struggle.  But that would be a different movie.

Another little interesting fact was touched on, and that is that deaf people cannot enjoy music, a misconception that many people believe.  In fact, they can, just not in the same way that hearing people can.  For example, Frank liked rap music because of the heavy base that can be felt.  But the movie touched on a number of those little details about deaf people that I actually never gave much thought to.  The problem is that while those little facts were interesting, they weren’t terribly engaging or draamatic.

So again, I come back to the question, why was this film given so much acclaim?  And the only answer I can come up with it the quality of the acting.  To start with, It is important to note that Troy Kotsur won the Academy award for Best Supporting Actor.  He really did a fantastic job.  There is a great scene where Frank and Jackie go to see Ruby perform in a concert.  There is a moment when Ruby is singing a duet with Miles.  The camera pans around Frank and the sound cuts out.  At first I thought the look on his face was confusion.  But that wouldn’t make sense.  He knows what being deaf is.  So really it was a complex combination of wonder, understanding, and acceptance, as he sees how the other members of the audience have a real emotional response to his daughter’s voice in a way he thinks he cannot.  But then later that night, he asks Ruby to sing the song for him as he puts his hands on her throat, and feels the vibrations made by her voice.  He is nearly brought to tears, and it was a beautiful scene.

Interesting note:  As a well-known actress who happens to be deaf, Marlee Matlin was the first cast member brought on board.  When the producers wanted to hire hearing actors to play other deaf roles, Matlin threatened to pull out of the film, insisting that they hire deaf actors to play opposite her.  Good for her.

And Matlin is one of those actors who I’ve always loved.  I don’t think of her as a deaf actor.  I think of her as an actor who happens to be deaf.  What I mean is that she is a very talented actress, first and foremost.  The fact that she is deaf is inconsequential.  She is just a great actress.  If you have any doubt of that, just watch her in 1986’s Children of a Lesser God, or even one of my favorite TV shows, The West Wing.

And finally, there was the third actor who was deaf, Daniel Durant.  I loved him and I loved his character.  He was the first in his family to stand up for Ruby’s desire to be a singer, saying that the family could get by without holding her back by insisting that she stay with them forever to be their link to the hearing world.  He recognized that such a situation was only in the family’s best interest, and not in Ruby’s.  He is the one who pushed her to follow her dream, even if it took her away from them.  He played a young man who wanted the world to deal with him on his own terms, and not the other way around.  And I have to say, he was pretty nice to look at, too.  I liked how they romantically paired him up with Ruby’s friend Gertie.

There’s something else I liked about the movie that I think needs to be mentioned.  The family was a professional fishing family.  They owned their own boat.  However, there was a scene in which they are fishing, and Ruby isn’t with them.  When the Coast Guard tries to contact them on the radio, and even when they approach them in the water, Frank and Leo cannot hear them approach.  Because of this, their fishing license is suspended.  The film almost tries to make us feel sorry for them, but I have to applaud the reality of that situation.  And the reality is that if you cannot hear the Coast Guard, then you are a potential danger to yourselves and to others.  But I think the point of the scene was that either Ruby should have been with them, or they should not have gone fishing.  It emphasized how much they depended on Ruby for their living, no matter what she wanted for herself. 

Interesting note: According to Wikipedia, there was a certain amount of criticism from the deaf community, itself, saying that “The film’s depiction of the hearing child interpreting for her parents even in settings where professional interpreters would be required by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, such as a court hearing and medical appointments, received widespread criticism as being misrepresentative.”

But I have to remind myself that this wasn’t a movie about the challenges faced by deaf people.  It was a coming-of-age story.  And what’s one of those without a young romance.  But I’m sorry.  The romance wasn’t particularly intense, passionate, sweet, or even engaging.  It was there, and it was nice.  But unfortunately, I didn’t get much out of it.  There was an amusing moment where Ruby and Miles are in her room practicing their duet when they hear Frank and Jackie having sex.  Being deaf, they weren’t particularly aware of just how loud they were being.  Ruby is forced to interrupt them by going into the room and flashing the lights on and off.  Not knowing what else to do, Frank and Jackie sit Ruby and Miles down and tell them, in sign-language, to use protection when they have sex.  It was a pretty funny scene.

And lest I forget, I have to talk about the character of Mr. V.  I can’t decide if I liked him or not.  As a teacher, he was kind of a jerk, at first.  He talked down to the students and came close to making fun of them individually during the first choir class.  I didn’t like him until he decided to take Ruby on as a personal voice student.  Then, he was very unsympathetic about her and her personal situation.  But in a way, that, at least, was realistic.  I have been in choirs all my life, and most of them, from school teachers to professional directors, have the opinion that if you are in their choir, then your commitment to the choir comes first, before everything else in your life.  If it is the most important thing to them, then it should be the most important thing to you.  Fortunately, by the end of the movie, we end up liking him.

Interesting note: In doing a little reading about the film, I found it interesting to learn that they are planning a stage version of the movie, and of course, they want it to be a musical.

That being said, yes, there was music in the film.  There had to be, as Ruby’s whole story arc revolves around her being a singer.  As for that, Emilia Jones and Ferda Walsh-Peelo did their own singing, and I have to say I was rather unimpressed with their voices.  They weren’t bad, but I think I would place them on the high end of average.  When Ruby goes to her big audition to get into Berkley School of Music, she sings a song which I have always liked.  She sang Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell.  I’ve always loved the gentle and yet almost profound lyrics.  It is a beautiful song, and Jones sang it competently.  I question whether an admissions panel would allow the audition to continue if the candidate’s family is in the theatre.  Maybe they would, but they shouldn’t, especially if none of the other candidates were allowed to have their families there.

So she signs the lyrics to the music, and sings to her family, which gives her the confidence to sing the song beautifully.  And lo and behold, she makes it into Berkley School of Music.  That was a bit predictable.  They wanted to have that feel-good ending.  They wanted that wonderful shot of the family in a group hug before she is driven away to college.  It was nice, but that was about it.  It just wasn’t that profound for me.  I think I was supposed to get a little teary, but I just didn’t.  There was nothing wrong with the ending, but it didn’t grab me like a Best Picture winner is supposed to.

Still, was it a good movie?  Yes.  It wasn’t great, but it was good.  Is it important to have positive representations of deaf people in films?  Of course it is, and this one did a fine job of that.  But should it have won Best Picture? Like I said… I would have voted for King Richard.  Despite the important deaf angle, King Richard was just a better movie.

Nomadland – 2020-21

Well this has certainly been a rough year.  This year the Academy decided to extend the nomination season to include the beginning of the next year because the Pandemic threw off nearly every aspect of nearly everyone’s lives, and Hollywood was certainly not immune.  Movie release dates were pushed back across the board, and movie theaters were shut down.  Even now, a year and three months after the world went into lockdown, movie theaters are just beginning to open up again.

But the world continues turning, and movies continue to get made.  This year’s winner of the Best Picture award was a movie that was rather simply made.  I mean that there were few, if any, special effects, no CGI, certainly no green-screening or composite shots.  The story, if you want to call it that, wasn’t complex or difficult to understand.  The film had a thin plot line, and was generally made up of individual moments and characters sketches that were tenuously strung together into a loose narrative surrounding Fern, played by Frances McDormand, who was also one of the film’s producers.  It was like a year in the life of a wanderer.

It was almost like a documentary about a class of American citizens who live a very specific kind of life.  As the title of the film suggests, they are modern nomads.  They are people who, sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity, live in vans, trailers, mobile homes, or other vehicles.  They say that they are not homeless.  They are simply houseless.  They travel the open roads, going from place to place, some looking for work, some enjoying the freedom of not having to work at all.

Fern was given a little back-story that involved the death of her husband and the death of her town.  Childless and alone, Fern finds work where she can, working for an Amazon warehouse in the North during winter, and working on farms and campgrounds in the south after the Holiday season rush ends.  But her friend Linda May invites her to come to come to a desert rendezvous in Arizona.  It is here that she meets Bob Wells.

Bob is a kind and gentle man who is like the Nomad guru.  He makes Fern feel welcome within the community of nomads, and here, she finds friends and a home.  They band together and create a commune.  But when the season ends, or when seasonal work opens in another area of the country, they pack up all their belongings and move. 

Before watching this movie, I had the misconception that the people in this nomad community were all folks whose lives had beaten them down.  Either they had lost their homes, their loved ones, or their families, and they were forced to live out of their cars.  Essentially, I thought of them as homeless people, living not on the streets of a city, but on the roads of the country.  But though some of these people were closer to that, some of them were there by choice, a concept I find difficult to understand.  Why would someone choose to become a nomad, a perpetual wanderer?

But they all had their reasons, and many of these reasons were given voice.  And to attest to the realism of these reasons, the movie actually had very few professional actors.  When I watched the credits at the end of the film, I saw that most of the cast were real people who simply played themselves.  There was Linda, played by Linda May, Bob Wells as Bob, and Swankie, played by Charlene Swankie. 

Interesting note: Swankie said, in a panel cast interview that for most of the movie, she just played herself, which was pretty easy.  It wasn’t until she had to play scenes which were fabricated for the film that she found how difficult acting actually was.  In the film, her character dies of cancer.

Those who were there by choice decided that retirement would be easier without the burden of maintaining a home, paying bills, putting down roots.  By assuming the nomadic lifestyle, they would be able to see the country without having to work.  They would spend their remaining days on the open road, communing with nature, and being part of the nomad community of fellow travelers.

Fern was on the road by choice, though life had certainly beaten her down and taken what she loved from her.  Her motives were a little difficult to grasp, but there are several times in the film when she is presented with the opportunity to settle down, but refuses.  Her sister Dolly, played by Melissa Smith, invites her to live with her and her family, though she knows Fern will not accept the offer.  She even comments on how, in the past, Fern couldn’t wait to leave home as soon as she was old enough.  Later in the film, Fern meets a man named Dave, played by David Strathairn.  He is a man with whom she could have a serious relationship.  Dave even decides to move in with his son and end his roaming.  Dave expresses his romantic feelings for Fern and invites her to settle down with him, but she leaves after only a few days.

You see, another misconception I had about Fern’s character is that she was sad and lonely, a condition that was a direct result of the death of her husband and the death of her home town.  But the more I think about it, the more I’m understanding that it wasn’t really true.  Her loneliness was periodically relieved when she joined the wider nomad community, led by Bob Wells.  And the times in the film where she seemed the most happy, were when she was alone, communing with nature.  She is shown visiting the beautiful Badlands National Park, Redwood National Park, and the Pacific Ocean, to name a few. 

But here’s my first real problem with the film.  My original ideas about the film were more in line with the actual reality of nomadic living than with the fictionalized version of it we are shown.  In real life, the houseless people living out of their vans really are only a stone’s throw away from homelessness.  The movie ends up playing out like a romanticized fantasy that shows only the good side of nomadic living.  The true hardships are rarely shown.  And when Dave has to be admitted to a hospital, the film glosses over how he is able to pay for his surgery and treatment.

According to Arun Gupta and Michelle Fawcette, writing for inthesetimes.com, “In the real world, many nomads desperately want a house. One admits ?“there is not so much difference between” the van dweller and the homeless person. By making Fern’s story one of personal responsibility and freedom, the movie erases the causes of the nomads’ economic pain.”  And I believe that is probably closer to the truth.  Sure, some people are there by choice, but I’m guessing that most of them probably aren’t.  Most of them have fallen on hard times

But this wasn’t their story.  This was Fern’s story, and she chose the open road where she could, for the most part, work when she wanted, and take her leisure when she wanted.  And they certainly went out of their way to make Fern’s story sand and depressing.  The score by Ludovico Einaudi used a lot of simple piano music, stark, bare and forlorn, and yet beautiful, much like Fern’s existence.

And that brings me to the second problem I had with the film.  It was too slow and heavy-handed.  Yeah, it is a heavy drama, but other Best Picture nominated movies like Schindler’s List or Amore can be serious and depressing without being so self-important and plodding.

Now, I’m not saying that this was a bad movie that shied away from the truth, painting a completely unrealistic picture of this subculture of American nomads, though there certainly is a bit of that going on.  It was an interesting movie, and the non-actors in the cast did a good job.  I especially liked Linda, Swankie and Bob Wells. The story of Linda nearly committing suicide, the story of Swankie’s impending cancerous death, and Bob’s telling of his son’s suicide were tales that easily touched my heart, and I felt for them, even if those stories were fictional.  The real Swankie wasn’t dying of cancer.

But just don’t go into the movie expecting to learn all there is to know about these nomads.  The realism only went so far.  The rest was tailor-made to tug at the heart-string.  Still, I thought Frances McDormand did a really good job with the material, and the director, Chloe Zhao, dealt with the subject matter in a sensitive way, if not altogether honest.  I believe they both deserved the Individual Oscars they won for Best Actress and Best Director.

Interesting Note: Both of these Oscar wins were historically significant.  McDormand was the first person to ever win Academy Awards as best producer and performer for the same film.  Zhao was the second woman and the first Chinese person to ever win the award for Best Director. 

So, all in all, I’m not sure if I agree with its Best Picture win.  Granted, it is the first of this year’s nominees I have watched, but I wasn’t overly impressed with the film.  For my tastes, it was too slow and uneventful, with a thin narrative that barely had a cohesive story-line.  Sure, it had a small amount of social relevance, but such a collection of short character studies does not a Best Picture winner make.  But maybe, just maybe, it was completely appropriate for such a difficult and disconnected year as 2020.