Deborah Ross

This film deserves all the awards and praise: Nomadland reviewed

Frances McDormand's face and everything she does with it is extraordinary

More beautiful than any beautiful actress: Frances McDormand as Fern in Nomadland 
issue 08 May 2021

Nomadland won multiple Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress, and if there’d been an award for Best Film In Which The Woman In Her Sixties Isn’t The Least Developed Character In The Screenplay, Hallelujah, About Time, it would have scooped that too. Not much competition, regrettably, but you have to admire the film just for that, plus there is much to admire generally.

It is based on the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by the journalist Jessica Bruder, who spent months living with older Americans who, out of economic necessity, eke out a living while travelling from place to place for seasonal employment.

We know that Fern is in the throes of grief simply by the way she handles a denim jacket

It’s been fictionalised here, mostly, and stars Frances McDormand who is somehow more beautiful than any beautiful actress, if that makes sense. I just love her face, and everything she does with it.

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