»Nomadland« by Chloé Zhao: Who is the woman who has just made Oscar history?

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Director and writer Chloé Zhao

Photo: Amanda Edwards / Getty Images

"I've always been an outsider," Chloé Zhao said of herself.

That was the case for the longest time in the film industry.

Only since this year do you need two hands to count how many women have ever been nominated for the Director's Oscar: Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig, Emerald Fennell, Chloé Zhao.

And only since this Sunday do you need two fingers to count how many of them have won: Kathryn Bigelow, Chloé Zhao.

In 2010 it was still a big surprise when Bigelow beat her ex-husband James Cameron and his mega blockbuster "Avatar" with "The Hurt Locker".

In 2021, nobody seriously expected anything other than that this Oscar night would end in a double triumph for the native Chinese Zhao, who has lived in the USA for a long time.

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Zhao at the BAFTAS award ceremony

Photo: BAFTA / HANDOUT / EPA

Since its world premiere in the Venice competition in September 2020, "Nomadland" has won almost every prize the film and its 39-year-old director could win: Golden Lion, Golden Globe, BAFTA, the main prize of the DGA directors' guild - an unbelievable 233 Total prices.

Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Jessica Burger, the gentle drama shows a country that can no longer take care of its citizens or perhaps doesn't want to.

Retired men and women roam the United States in motorhomes.

Temporary work and casual jobs keep them afloat financially;

the community that the self-declared nomads form wherever their paths cross provides emotional support.

Dignity, pride and the lust for life

Is that the legendary Frontier spirit that has fueled American pride for centuries? Or is it a helpless arrangement with the unreasonable demands of late capitalism? Zhao opts for the human approach, one could also say: the American approach, which gives people room for maneuver where the need is already overwhelming. Her main character Fern, played by the Oscar-winning Frances McDormand, explains that she is not "homeless" when she breaks up her household and stows the essentials in her trailer. She is just "houseless".

Zhao shot in the same milieu in which Burger did research.

Many of the people from the book play versions of themselves in the film. "Their stories were touching, illuminating, tragic and always sad," Zhao said of them.

“But they have not lost their pride, their dignity and their lust for life.

If you talk to them for a long time, at some point you talk about the important things, about rocks, grass, the sunrise. "

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Zhao with leading actress McDormand and cameraman Joshua James Richards

Photo: Searchlight Pictures / AP

These important things, as Zhao calls them, can be seen everywhere in "Nomadland". Zhao's long-time cameraman Joshua James Richards, also her partner in private, captured her in longing panoramic shots. The last ray of sunshine before dark seems to be on them. But still, it is not yet dark, it is never completely dark in "Nomadland".

You can therefore see the poetic-conciliatory end point behind the Trump era in the film.

An admission of how difficult it is to survive in this country and a celebration of the people who do so despite all odds.

But Zhao doesn't want her work to be understood that politically: »I was downright shocked when I noticed during the shoot how everyone was discussing exactly how to put things in a bucket.

No matter if poor or rich, no matter what political conviction or skin color, a discussion about going to the toilet in the van brings us all together.

Those are the many little things that my films want to emphasize. "

Having to give up the greatest passion

Zhao shot two feature films before »Nomadland«, both with the same ethnographic-documentary eye for detail, for which she has now received the highest recognition. For her debut “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” from 2015 (recently available on the MUBI streaming platform) she researched a reservation in South Dakota on a Lakota Sioux reservation and finally developed a raw, naturalistic family drama about constraints, but also those with amateur actors there Security that a community can offer.

During this research, Zhao met the young indigenous cowboy Brady Jandreau, who had to give up his beloved rodeo riding after a serious injury.

In her second feature film, "The Rider", which has already won several awards, he plays the leading role and varies his own story: What remains of a life when you have to sacrifice your greatest passion?

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Zhao with the cast and producer Forest Whitaker of her film "Songs My Brothers Taugt Me" at the premiere at the Sundance Festival

Photo: Larry Busacca / AFP

»Nomadland« continues Zhao's fact-based storytelling, but adds a crucial element: With Frances McDormand, a star is there for the first time. McDormand had already acquired the rights to Burger's non-fiction book when she saw "The Rider" and realized that Zhao could be the right director for "Nomadland" - and she herself the right leading actress. The way McDormand opens the film to people who are not interested in old-age poverty in the USA with her disarmingly empathic game paved the way to the Oscars.

At the same time, "Nomadland" also raised questions about Zhao's approach for the first time.

Where does this fixation on the marginalized come from when it comes from a privileged family?

In fact, Zhao's father is a Chinese steel tycoon, and her stepmother is a popular TV actress.

At the age of 15, the two sent Zhao to an English boarding school, after which she studied political science at the elite liberal college Mount Holyoke, and later film production at the renowned Tisch School of Arts in New York.

Fame?

Glamor?

Have the impoverished and injured characters from your previous films been a means to an end?

Your stirrups to success?

When you look at her next project, you almost get the impression: the superhero film "The Eternals" for Marvel with Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek.

The planned theatrical release in the USA is in November.

But anyone who has seen Zhao accept award after award in dungarees, checked shirt and baseball hat cannot fail to recognize that someone here is not playing for fame and glamor.

Perhaps Chloé Zhao simply applies what Frances McDormand said about the nomads from their joint film: "Something in the human mind strives for movement, not for standstill."