How did we get from La la Land to Nomadland

Summer ended when school started. You didn’t mind autumn as much because you could get a second latte to “warm you up” and wear that cardigan again. In January you didn’t feel like working, instead you browsed the Oscar nominees while the boss was not looking and tweeted that it was outrageous that so and so was snubbed or that that director was a sure win, else the word is unfair.

The world as we knew it has ended. Schools opened and closed many times over the year, and you could not complain about the commute to work because you were at home setting up the bright ring light in front of the computer. February passed without the Oscar, so did March. Finally, today, April 25th, the winners are being announced.

Although the Oscars never really lost their allure, they have certainly gone through some dark years and nearly lost their credibility. When Braveheart won in 1996 and Titanic the following year, the cinephiles looked aghast. Shakespeare in Love, a ludicrous rom com got the prize in 1998 and The Lord of the Rings won in 2003 (It is TRUE!). Crash victory in 2005 was the final nail in the coffin.

Recently thou, the academy opened to a more diverse, profound cinema: the decision to award Moonlight over the overrated La La Land was commendable; The Shape Of Water was a risky but ultimately brave choice – the love story between a mute girl and a aquatic monster was, if not more believable, definitively more enthralling than the sappy one between Rose and Jack on the doomed cruiser. Despite Awkwafina’s performance as Billi in Farewell being overlooked by the academy, last year best picture was Parasite; the highly stylised and disturbing tale of two Korean families proved that the Oscars were ready for new, exciting voices.

This year, due to the restrictions, I have manged to see only two of the films nominated for best picture: Nomadland by Chinese born female director Chloe Zhao and Minari by Lee Isaac Chung. The “American dream” has long been the object of fascination, especially for non-Americans and these two movies are no exceptions. Chung’s is about the beginning and Zhao’s is about the end of this specific dream: move away, start again, find success.

At the heart of Minari, loosely based on the director experience of being raised in rural America by Korean parents, is the dream of the immigrant who in 1983 moves his family to a modest farm. Amid church-goers and a marriage crisis, he tries to escape the fate of plant working that expects Asian immigrants. In Nomadland, we find ourselves at the other end of that journey. It is 2011 and dystopia is already present even before news of the pandemic. It comes in the shape of extreme unregulated American neo-liberalism that has left a widow homeless and vulnerable.

What makes the movie so compelling is the constant search of beauty in this precarious lifestyle. As we follow Fern and her trailer crossing the country looking for temporary jobs, we also discover the disintegration of the American dream points to a painful yet much needed revaluation of the meaning of happiness and freedom. It is the end of the world, as we know it. Thank god for that!