Nomadland

Nomadland

Director Chloé Zhao. Cast: Frances McDormand, Gay DeForest, Patricia Grier, David Strathairn

Director, writer, editor Chloé Zhao had already left us hugely impressed with her heartfelt “western” the Rider in 2018 where she found poetry in the tale of a rodeo rider. Now she does it again and once again she finds beauty in the story of a seemingly average modern-day nomad, looking for a “house” or rather “a way to live her life” day by day, after the death of her soulmate husband. On her “travels” she drifts in and out of the lives of other drifters she comes across with, many old people living at the margins of society (though no politic is ever mention in the film), nearing the end of their lives, often lonely, but always able to find happiness in the smallest things in life.

It’s a hard film to describe without making it sound very pompous and a bit boring, but Nomadland anything but (though I recognise this may not be a film for everyone).

Frances McDormand’s powerful and yet, understated and quiet performance is astonishing and quite possibly the best of her career (which by itself says it all!). She literally inhabits the character of Fern, this grieving and yet strong woman who lives in a van with her few possessions moving around almost aimlessly, like a stranger in her own land, looking for a job to be able to carry on living. Her face, a simple glance, a half smile, a fleeting look speak volumes, dispensing the script of pointless lines and long monologues.

The visuals and the soundtrack also contribute to build a perfect atmosphere around her. The moving score by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi constantly and reflecting her internal states of being: quiet and thoughtful at times (hence some subtle piano notes), and wrapped in emotional turmoil (a growing orchestrated soundscape).

There’s a great intimacy in the way it’s all filmed and edited too: fragments of quiet vignettes speak of the her daily routine: on one hand the film has the great immediacy of a documentary but it also has the beauty of the great vistas and landscapes like in modern epic western. If this doesn’t get nominated at the Oscars, then I really know nothing about movies anymore.

You’ll be able to see it in February when it finally comes out (unless you saw this at the Venice or London Film Festival).

I May Destroy You

I MAY DESTROY YOU ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Creator: Michaela Coel. Cast: Michaela Coel, Weruche Opia, Paapa Essiedu, Stephen Wight, Marouane Zotti, Harriet Webb, Aml Ameen, Adam James, Natalie Walter, Karan Gill.

This came highly recommended by a lot of my friends and most of the British press and it can see why.

It is a multi-layered , through-provoking, both rational and emotional, fearless and complex TV series showing not just the many representations of “sexual misconduct” and the results on the people who experience it (the victims, the witnesses, the imposters) but it’s also about race, gender and our over-reliance of social media (says the guy who’s writing a blog advertised on Twitter and Facebook).

Technically it feels a bit cheaper and often a lot less accomplished than many of those US series we are getting these days (also stylistically it’s a bit all over the place), but beyond that, there is some really good writing at play, constantly alternating between funny and devastating, empowering and soul crashing, all made it even more powerful by some raw and fearless performances. 

It’s a very important series and I am glad it exists, however, did it really needed to be 12 episodes? If it has been a lot tighter it would not have lost any of its impact, in fact it would have been even stronger.

I did feel it lost steam more often that it should have: some of the episodes were much too diluted with tangential subplots and indulgent extended sequences; those sex scenes, dance scenes, drinking scenes… (yes, thanks, I get it, move on please now). The tricksy ending is also a little bit too heavy handed and seems to belong to a different series.

But when it kept the focus to the main storyline it was really quite good.

Available on the BBC iPlayer

Nowhere special

Nowhere special

Director: Uberto Pasolini. Cast: James Norton, Daniel Lamont, Eileen O’Higgins 

Nowhere special is based on a true story of thirty-five-year-old window cleaner John who is raising a son on his own (The mother left after giving birth). When is given few months to live he’s not only determined to shield his 4 years old son from the the truth, but also he tries to find the perfect family to raise him after he’s gone.Shown at the Venice Festival in September 2020, “Nowhere special” is a small independent co-production between the UK and Italy (It comes out in the UK in March 2021), which unlike its title actually goes somewhere special.

It is a rather powerful film that’s certain to leave a mark on whoever watches it.Needless to say I found it absolutely heart-breaking and could hardly contain my tears, but despite its harrowing premise director Uberto Pasolini (yes, the same guy who did the Full Monthy) never gets sentimental or melodramatic, preferring a more delicate, subtle and natural approach, aided by two magnificent performances by both father (James Norton recently seen in “Little Women”) and then incredibly cute little boy (Daniel Lamont).

Beyond the moving set-up, this is really a film about the search of what it means to be a good parent.It is a slow but sensitive film made of quiet moments, silent looks and small gesture which all speak louder than any words. It’s not a masterpiece by all means by it really touched me and I know it’ll stay with me for a while. The scene where the father prepares a box full of letters for his son to open when he’ll be older is a little microcosm of the film itself: melancholic, touching, simple and quiet and yet immensely powerful and rather devastating.

Apollo 11

Apollo 11 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Director: Todd Douglas Miller. Cast Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin 

There are different kind of documentaries. Those where you learn about something or somebody you didn’t know. Those where they expose some sort of scandal, or crime. The historic ones with interviews from experts. And those where are essentially they just “show you” an event… and that’s pretty much it. 

Apollo 11 is one of those latter ones. A lot of care and attention has gone in meticulously collecting more than 11,000 hours of NASA audio recordings (which apparently they didn’t even know they had), painstakingly editing a huge amount of film material, including some never-before-seen 65mm footage recently discovered in National Archives. In fact there is so much stuff that sometime they have to split the screen to show you 2 or 3 shots at the same time.

The footage does indeed look beautifully and if it wasn’t for the technology seen on screen and the 60s clothes it would look like it was filmed yesterday.

As for the film itself, listening to the voices from the control room or from the spaceship (I really had to put up the subtitles because most of it is pretty garbled), seeing all those technicians at work and the general public from the time as they watch the event can be quite a mesmerising experience, but also quite or boring one if I have to be honest.

The lack of interviews or even simply voices from the time telling about their feelings and thoughts makes this a strangely cold experience. Those astronauts remain aloof, just distant figures from whom we learn nothing about themselves and their experience.

I understand this is not what the film set out to be but I can’t help feeling that in those 11,000 hours of recording there must have been something else which would have made this more alive for me. 

So as an act of film preservation, Apollo 11 is one for the history books for sure. Beyond that and the fact that it looks beautiful, there are dozens of other films about the moon landing where you might learn more. I found films like (the delightful) “The Dish” or the documentary “For All Mankind” much more engaging, infinitely more entertaining and dare-I-say… moving.

A Christmas Carol (2020)

A Christmas Carol (2020)

Director: Jacqui Morris. Cast: Thea Achillea, Edd Arnold, Simon Russell Beale, Leslie Caron, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya. Andy Serkis

I don’t think there’s ever been a version of A Christmas Carol that I haven’t liked to some degree, whether it’s the Disney animated version from the 80s with Mickey Donald and Scrooge (that’s my favourite in fact), or the one with the Muppets or Bill Murray’s Scrooge, I always end up going along with it. There’s clearly something within the actual original Dickensian story itself that makes it not just timeless, warm and magic. Nothing screams more “Christmas” than “A Christmas Carol”.

So when I heard that a new version was being made with Carey Mulligan, Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis, Daniel Kaluuya and Simon Russell Beale,, I just couldn’t wait to see it.

Bizarrely it ended up being the version is the one that left me the coldest. I didn’t mind the theatrical/stagey approach mixed with animation, some that in fact looked really good, but having relatively unknown actors and dancers mining words spoken by off camera the better-known actors I was hoping to watch .made for a very jarring viewing experience (and also made me wish I was watching those actors instead). The very artificial (and constantly distracting) format felt more like an experiment than and actual film and crucially took all the emotions out of the story.It may be an interesting piece of “Art” or “theatre” (and I use the inverted commas not by chance), but as a film it’s a complete failure (and a rather boring one too).

So in the end the two stars are only there for the production design work.