I just saw Nomadland tonight. It won Best Picture this year and starred one of my top 5 favorite actors, Francis McDormand. The director was the first woman of color to ever win. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, because I knew it would be somewhat depressing, and I heard it was slow, but it kept my attention with so many brilliant details about the unique people in the world we meet day to day.
While a few scenes led me to tears and there was an overall sadness to the situation everyone was in, as most people don’t become nomads if life is going great, there was a positivity to it as well… real people, just doing their best with whatever they can get their hands on, and surviving. I have friends who live this way. I talk to them when they have internet access, but they live in vans in little communities and it’s a real kind of life. The movie sort of reminded me of the 2014 Oren Moverman film “Time Out Of Mind”, starring Richard Gere as a homeless man in New York City. Ben Vereen was also in that, as was my friend Billy Hough, who played a street performer and his song rolled over the credits. “Time Out Of Mind” was a lot more depressing though. There was not much hope in that film at all, yet it was extremely realistic to the life of being a homeless addict in the city. There is one scene in “Time Out Of Mind”, which I would say is kind of the climax of a very slow film, where Ben Vereen, who played a homeless friend of Richard Gere’s character, tells Richard Gere’s character a story while they are out for a walk, discussing what it’s like to be homeless and invisible. Ben’s character tells him that he had a friend who he met on the street, and they were out drinking in the winter and his friend peed himself. Vereen’s character said he helped his friend change into some other pants so he wouldn’t freeze, and he was helping him take off his boots, to find that his homeless friend who just wet himself had several checks made out to him for hundreds of dollars each, tucked into his boots. Vereen’s character said he asked his friend “Why don’t you cash these? Get an apartment! Why are you on the street?” and his friend replied with something like “I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve it.” The story was sort of a peak in the movie, bringing it all together, and that story is actually a true story of someone both Billy and I once knew, who was homeless for a long time. The guy who had the checks stashed into his boots and who told our friend that he didn’t deserve the money actually killed himself the day after our friend found the checks. That part wasn’t mentioned in the film, yet that movie was a lot slower and more depressing than Nomadland. The characters in Nomadland were brilliant glimpses of real people who all still seemed to have a spark left inside them, even if depressed. My friend informed me tonight that many of the characters were played by the actual people they were based on, and I think that definitely added something powerful to the film, because they did seem a lot more real than Hollywood actors usually do.
The relationship between Francis McDormand’s character and her sister in the movie reminded me a bit of my relationship with my sisters and the sadness and guilt I have for going crazy and doing that to all of us in some sense. I also related to the part about how we end up seeing people we lose down the road; maybe months later, maybe years, maybe in different lifetimes, but we always catch up with the people we’ve met and who enter our hearts. It made me think about my mental health worker and how she’s leaving, and I’m still so sad about that, but I’ve lost touch with others who have come back into my life after a few years. Sometimes it takes 25 years before someone is meant to come back, sometimes more than that, but they do. My papa has came back to me after his death… my nana too actually, and some of my friends who died as well. They just leave me little messages in some way or another, and they’re always out there somewhere, to meet again. Everyone we meet is. It’s part of how the universe operates.
There was also something in Nomadland about a woman who was dying. She hoped that people would remember her. It made me think of what it’s like to die when you don’t have anyone to remember you. I think to some degree, being remembered is hugely important to me. It made me think about how I’ve published my trilogy, and soon an autobiography about my life, and how once I do so, it’s out there in the world, for people to read and to remember me and my story. That made me feel good. Obviously I hope I’ll get more readers for this next book, and I know that’s gonna be hard to do since it’s not my debut. A lot of my potential fans have already given up on me since my trilogy didn’t blow up and this next book is struggling to find representation as well. I do feel fairly confident that people will see improvements in the writing and story telling, but will it be enough to get me to the next level of being able to do it for a living? I don’t know. Either way, it will be read, and it will be around, probably long after I die, and that’s kinda awesome and helps me feel better about those fears.
I would give Nomadland a solid A rating. I might not re-watch it many times, but definitely worth seeing.
Here is a picture of the shirt I have on today…
Peace
