Chloe Zhao vs Nomadland

 Chloe Zhao, originally Zhao Ting is born on 31 st March 1982, Beijing, China. She is reputed as a Chinese filmmaker, but her movies are on self-discovery journeys in America.

Zhao’s father was an executive officer of a private company, and her mother did her work as a hospital official. Zhao wasn’t a girl who was interested in school. Her favorite was movies. She managed little English and in 1998 her parents make her go abroad to England. She attended the Sussex boarding school Brighton college from 1998 to 2000. Her high school was in Los Angeles. From Mount Holyoke College, she received her B.A. in 2005 for the subjects she studied, film studies, and politics.  She also attended Tisch School of the arts, New York University, and received a B.A. in 2010.

In 2010 she introduced her first movie “Daughters”, and it was about a Chinese girl in a village who fled to escape from her arranged marriage. In 2017 she introduced her second movie “The Rider”. The movie received the top prize in Director's Fortnight, which was the independent film section at Cannes.

Zhao had a chance to study the nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21 st Century (2017) written by Jessica Bruder. It was all about the Americans in the age of retirement and how they get adopted to live in RV's and travel throughout the country. Meanwhile, the actress Frances McDormand who was impressed with the second movie "The Rider" joined with Zhao to produce Nomadland (2020) and she is the character who acts as Fern in the movie.

The movie came to the theatre on 29th January 2021. Frances McDormand, David Strathearn, Linda May can be considered as the major roles in the movie. The studio is Searchlight Pictures, and the genre is drama. Friendship can be identified as the topic of the movie. Character strengths are gratitude, perseverance, and teamwork. The runtime of the movie is 108 minutes.  The movie received Academy Award, Common Sense Selection, and the Golden Globe Award. Chloe Zhao became the best director in the Oscar Film Festival for directing the movie.

The concept of "home on wheels" is mainly highlighted in the movie. McDormand's Character can be stated as the most outstanding and most powerful character which affects the success of the movie. The life of Fern flows seeking pleasure and joy along the road. The road can be considered as a symbol that symbolizes the journey of life. At the beginning of the movie, it was the year 2011 in which The United States Gypsum Corporation Closes its mine located in Nevada. With this decision, the town gets closed causing hundreds of families to leave the place. Since Fern has no children, she renovates a van to RV to travel throughout the western part of the United States. The lifestyle can be identified as the nomadic lifestyle.

The plot of the movie is very well arranged by Zhao. The movie depicts the lifestyle of certain American people which the world generally doesn't know about. When one imagines what America is, how do Americans live? no one expects this kind of lifestyle. However, this is a different angle and that is what Zhao needed to convey throughout her movie. Still, someone can recognize the nomadic lifestyle as a way of life that is uncomfortable and uneasy. But for some people, it may be processing certain kinds of endemic and specific features inherited to the lifestyle.

As conclusive remarks, it can be stated that Chloe Zhao is a film director who always looks at things from a different angle. Instead of a typical romance, thrillers, action, comedy… she always tries to entertain her audiences with knowledge and philosophical angles. Chloe Zhao’s movie Nomadland (2020) enriches the audience with Psycho-social and logical life experiences.

 

Written by H. Deshan Wijayantha, Department of Linguistics 

(Information – From Britannica the Encyclopaedia, Common Sense Media)

(Photographs – From Wikipedia the Encyclopaedia)