NOMADLAND, SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS, and the Oscillating Optics of Authenticity & Wealth (Patreon)

1. a matter of good fortune

Going into the Oscars there was a whole public hubbub about whether or not Chloe Zhao “came from money.” From the start, I want to be clear that I don’t really care to answer this question. This isn’t really about a single individual, especially when people online act like they’re crackerjack detectives just because they’re making broad assumptions from wiki about the Chinese steel industry and expensive UK boarding schools. But that disinterest goes double for the fact that Zhao therefore felt she needed to defend herself and proclaim that she took out student loans or something. I dunno. I really don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of details as “proof” one way or the other because that game is a trap. What I DO want to talk about is the reason it’s a passionate topic of conversation in the first place. And that’s because it taps into a much broader issue…

Hollywood has a massive wealth problem.

It is but one of many problems that exist at the intersections of sexism, racism, and ableism in the grand American shit-show. But it’s that specific part of the shit-show that I want to talk about today. People often talk about how hard it is to break into this industry in general, but wealth is absolutely one of the main gatekeepers and it is so in a pretty concrete way. When I moved here 16 years ago unpaid internships were the main entry point. Forget the insane competitiveness, there’s the basic logistics to consider. You had to work a few days a week for no money, you had to pay to live in uber-expensive Los Angeles, and you had to pay for school full-time. These costs are exorbitant, which dramatically affects the initial selection pool. And within that pool it is often kids who have that pre-existing connection to wealth in question, which adds up fast in a town with very few “spots.” Heck, later when I was working in marketing at a popular cable network, everyone played the game “what do the interns drive?” And usually the least expensive car was a new Mercedes. And a lot of those kids go on to become your boss in 8 years, which tells you so much about the ouroborical pipeline.

Believe it or not, these dynamics are even more true of the gatekeepers of the independent world where they don’t even have to meet basic hiring standards that corporations do. And because making films is incredibly expensive - like many-years-of-salary-expensive even just on the lower end - which means you’re reliant on the rich gatekeepers in an even more forthright way. Which is all why you see Onion hit it with gems like “Independent Film Made By Dependent 27 year old.”  But within the both systems, perhaps the biggest advantage that comes with money is time. When you don’t have to work full time, you get to devote that time to your career. You’re not busy fighting to just work and live. Which means you get to make more of those chances happen around you. You get to push your way into luck. And it’s success is evident in the sheer volume of people who make it happen this way.

Time after time, finding how many people “come from money” always hits like a bit of gut punch, no matter how kind or truly wonderful the person may be. It just makes you feel the insular unsustainable nature of the system. Even though most people know how lucky they are, I can’t tell you how many people don’t really want to think about it (or at least talk about it), especially those who have benefitted from more than others. Because no one wants to feel the heaviness of that guilt. Everyone wants to feels like “they’re in the middle of the pack” and then fixate their disdain on the person who was, like, THE PRESIDENT OF HOLLYWOOD’s kid or something (even though sometimes those kids are often the nicest and hardest working somehow, as if deeply aware of their intense power and craving normalcy / people not asking them for favors). It’s just so many people have no idea how far away they are from the “true middle” of people trying to make it here. It’s like when people say they are middle class and their parents are doctors and lawyers. But please know that I include myself in this dynamic, too. My parents were public school teachers, but aside from a few blips - I was able to have a fairly sustained life of normalcy. So how can I complain about this when I talk to an old editor friend who crawled up through the reality TV racket and literally walked here from El Salvador when they were 10?

It results in an industry where everyone feels lucky, but no one wants to really pull back on the optics. An industry where countless executives and directors say where you went to school isn’t important and then genuinely do not realize 40% of their crew went to USC, the best film school in the nation. They don’t realize because it’s not talked about in these larger conversational terms. They are productions of chains of influence (as in you hire a USC guy who hires a USC guy who hires USC, etc). And then there are these essential connection hubs around places like AFI or the Sundance labs. And these networks are so so so so so much smaller than you think. And as I said before, it often comes down to who got to spend their time working on their art and getting better while another person was saddled with a day job and crammed their dreams into edge of the margins? And who never even had a chance to really start? But to finally bring all this back around to the topic at hand…

What does one do with the answers when talking *about* the art itself?

Looping back to the Chloe Zhao conversation, the question I guess is “how does this really matter?” Because what, we need to immediately tear down the third asian person to win best director? The second female ever? The first woman of color? All for something we don’t actually have a real understanding of? And especially that person is clearly so vivid and talented? Funny how that always happens! It’s almost as if there’s this unfortunate streak for who and when of how those optics get deployed, huh? And when it comes to Hollywood’s wealth optics it’s easy to spot the nepotism with celebrity kids, but it’s equally true for all sorts of people you would never think about. Julia Louis Dreyfus’ family was worth billions. Same with Nick Kroll’s. Paul Giamatti’s dad was the commissioner of major league baseball for Pete’s sake! And I love these fucking people! So again, there’s obvious problems of turning this stuff into ammo for the games of personal attack (especially when “coming from wealth” doesn’t necessarily mean “having a good foundation,” see the traumas of Brooke Shields’s life). But it absolutely needs to be talked about in the larger conversation about the systems of wealth that support the longevity of careers where it’s really, really hard to have a long career, let alone an initial opportunity.

Because it’s funny how often good fortune comes from good fortunes.

And when it comes to the critical conversation of an artist’s work, the truth is that the optics of wealth and “where you come from” do not NOT matter. Because it absolutely adds a complicated layer to the matters of authenticity and artistic voice. And there is absolutely a way that wealth impacts one’s world view, specifically the way one seeks esteem and shows their view of what is important. This inclination not only impacts what stories get told, but much more importantly… how they get told.

2. “true poverty is… ”

One of my favorite movies is Sullivan’s Travels by Preston Sturges.

In case you’ve never seen it, I’ll go straight to wiki: “John L. Sullivan is a popular young Hollywood director of profitable but shallow comedies. Dissatisfied with his films, he tells his studio boss, Mr. LeBrand, that he wants his next project to be a serious exploration of the plight of the downtrodden, based on the novel O Brother, Where Art Thou? (yes this is where the Coen brothers got the title) LeBrand wants him to direct another lucrative comedy instead, but Sullivan refuses. He wants to "know trouble" first hand, and plans to travel as a tramp so he can make a film that truly depicts the sorrows of humanity. His British butler and valet openly question the wisdom of his plan.”

If that sounds funny, you’re correct. The film is a sharp-as-hell riot from minute one (and kind of unspoilable, so don’t worry). What with the two studio heads pressing him hard for being a fancy college boy, “what do you know about hard luck?” No, they were guys with the hard luck (and a little hypocrisy). Plus, Veronica Lake gets to give what's for in one of my favorite “jaded actor” performances even. So many of my favorite lines get to fly fast and furious (“you know the nice thing about buying food for a man is you don’t have to laugh at his jokes”). Plus, the story is so good at changing directions and playing with expectation. Especially when it starts moving to some unexpected dark places, invoking surprising messages about the prison industrial complex and racism and the intersections of actual decency in the system, all before underlining the power of comedy in the face of drama.

What I love is Sullivan’s Butler warns him about the fallacy of his journey from the get go: “the poor know all about poverty, and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.” Luckily, Sullivan eventually comes to learn that lesson, too. Because the second Sullivan really comes to know what it means to know poverty, he has too much respect for the hardship of it and therefore knows he’s not the person to tell that story…

And yet, I can’t tell you how many people have to learn this.

I can’t tell you how many college kids try to make films that paw at grand importance, telling stories of war, gangs, and actual historical events. No, not in the way where they’re trying to have fun with genre, but in the way where they are aiming for a certain kind of social esteem and import. Their posturing a front of wisdom and adulthood (also, please know this criticism is aimed at myself, too. My first two college films were fun, but then I made the mistake with the last one of trying to do some overly serious devil and Daniel Webster shit and it was insuuuuuffffferable). But this poverty habit continues right into the indie film circuit. I was talking with an exec friend about some on the rise filmmakers and he called their early work “heroin cosplay,” which is only the funniest thing I’ve heard in my entire life.

But the notion of glamorizing poverty can cut in more literal directions, too. A film like Beasts of The Southern Wild, while showing its teeth in moments, also portrays the wonder / happiness /  magic nature of how poverty is about embracing the simple life and really living! Which is, of course, just a play fantasy of the rich, where they ache for a more soulful, back to the nature of existence they’d never have to actually live (reminder, Walden lived 20 minutes from his mom and had her do his laundry). On the flip side, there are those artists who explore the more criminal edges of poverty to prove how hard they are. To show that they can hang and speak for those cultures… because… reasons (there’s some way Chet Hanks is a part of this that I’m genuinely not qualified to answer). And for a lot of these inclinations, you can see the way that both guilt and fear hang so many of these inclinations. Often in a way that’s achingly transparent, too. But at the same exact time, I think having a “respect” for depictions of poverty can have a misunderstanding in the opposite direction, too…

Paul Schrader, ever the opinionated curmudgeon, recently called Nomadland “fake poverty” specifically saying that it’s “characters playing at being poor. Being really poor is another film. An unwatchable one.” And then elaborating with, “True poverty is bleak, unrelenting, and unescapable. The only way to commercially dramatize it is to fabricate a positive resolution. There is no positive resolution.” It’s one of those things that, in one way, sounds sympathetic because it’s not trying to paint a lovely portrait over poverty and use it for some beautifying purpose. But at the same exact damn time, there is no “only way.” In fact, this characterization of poverty reduces the human being within poverty to just that: only poverty. And people in the aforementioned bleak, unrelenting, and unescapable poverty aren’t JUST that. They deal with it somehow, often with a spectrum of human emotions from anger, displacement, boredom, depression, normalization, and yes, finding moments of joy. Just as people deal with all forms of unrelenting adversity. And I actually think there was another film released this year that speaks to this idea so succinctly.

That would be Minari. It even feels weird to talk about poverty with regards to the film, but that’s because Lee Isaac Chung’s incredible film isn’t really fixating on it. But it’s there all right. Not just with Paul, the character who helps in the farm. You see it in the way his wife Monica looks around at their empty trailer with horror, the prospect of a life they have to somehow make. In that way, it’s more about the impact of being on the edge of poverty. It’s about what happens when you take a chance with so little. The decisions made without safety nets or lifelines. The film so captures that the thing where you can just feel the weight and pressure of money that hangs over absolutely everything at every moment. And more than that, just how easy it is to just keep sliding back in a way where it feels impossible to get ahead. Even years later, this Pajiba article on Shameless still sticks with me in the way it absolutely captures the way that being poor always charges interest. It all feels so Sisyphean.

But when it comes to the characterization of this Sisyphean reality, I can’t help but look at the way people frame these stories, too. Often, those from wealth want to find the easy scapegoats and demonize them. Or they only want to look at it as this systemic thing, for they are interested in the ways the system traps and blocks people, as if they were looking at a flawed piece of engineering. Or worse, they only use them props in some Aaron Sorkin stump speech delivery by an ivy educated white man. But thankfully, sometimes it’s better. A sage like The Wire can at least ingrain those systematic observations by meaningfully putting them into character dynamics and arcs (but without that, the show would be more didactic and insufferable than I think people realize). And sometimes they opt for more comi-dark depictions that I think somehow fit better. I mean, I think the Coen brothers often find this dark hilarity in the pitiful plights of man, with what Wallace diagnosed as a Kafkaesque sense of humor toward misery. The kind of sentiment best expressed as: “there is hope, but not for us.”

But the difference between these depictions versus those that come from people who actually grew up poor or on the edge of poverty was that… they were just in it. And yeah, I assure you most understand the systems that caused them grief because they faced the roadblocks so often. And they also know how little understanding the system itself helps if things aren’t people aren’t actually committed to changing on some massive level. So no. They’re not spending their narrative time alleviating guilt. There is just so much more interest in who they are outside of the poverty itself.

It would be easy to say this is therefore about “politicizing” versus “not-politicizing,” but frankly I disagree. I think this is about filmmaking that tries to make us feel sympathy versus filmmaking that tries to make us feel empathy. A film like Detroit is ostensibly about racism in America and yet it mostly uses black characters and their suffering as props to make us (the audience) feel pity for them and thus exist for the white characters to have a moral journey around. It only aims for sympathy - and that framework is part of the exact problem. For it takes the entire range of black humanity and opinion and whittles it down to a single solitary effect for someone else. Whereas the reality of any singular person is that they exist as a complete singular person. And with those who grow up poor? Or anyone suffering under the weight of any of the “isms” in the grand American shit-show? I can’t speak for anything other than to say that means taking their life of being “in it” and pursuing any form of art that aligns with their actual interest. Yes, sometimes they want to tell biographical stories about where they come from. Sometimes they want to find practical uses for the “good damage” as BoJack Horseman tried to put it (and that episode, oof). But sometimes those kids grow up and want to tell stories about Spider-man or space operas or anime. Sometimes they want to tell big, fun, popular stories that have fuck all to do with poverty. And as Sullivan’s Travels reminds us, sometimes they just want to laugh and there is utter nobility in any of these pursuits.

The whole point is true poverty isn’t one thing… it’s a lot of things.

The worst of which is that it’s all too common.

3. an authentic voice

I think Chloe Zhao’s The Rider is basically a perfect movie.

I wanted to be upfront about that, especially because we’re going to talk about the intricacies of Nomadland later and I want to first establish how this film embodies the best of all her creative instincts. It’s vibrant, emotional, thoughtful, and strikes like an arrow to the dead center of it’s thematic target. It also embodies the unique (yet functional) way that Zhao’s work deals with the matter of “authenticity.” It is popularly said that she is making narratives that play more in the realm of documentary or what people call “docudrama.” But I think this is a false diagnosis. For one, her style isn’t really aping at cinema verite, but actually far more concerned with the poetic language of traditional cinema. The only real documentary element comes from the way she uses real life subjects and helps tell the relative versions of their stories as traditional narratives. No, it’s not the exact stories of their lives, but close. Meaning it is the kind of storytelling that gives you freedom from exactitude so you can hit the square of the thematic truth more clearly.

Zhao talks about developing this instinct on her first film before Songs My Brothers Taught Me in this incredible vulture profile by Alison Willmore (which I”m going to keep quoting throughout this essay, it’s just that good) “It’s the first time I worked with nonprofessional actors. I went out there and found a young girl who was in a dance school.” The point of the assignment had been to work with actors, but Zhao discovered she preferred to build a film around someone who was already in a place she wanted, focusing instead on the world she was putting onscreen. “I realized,” she says, “I’m not the kind of writer-director that can create this character on my own in a dark room.”

In general, this approach has a catch 22.

It’s what I jokingly call it “The Armageddon Contradiction” which posited that it was easier to train oil drillers to be astronauts than train astronauts to be oil drillers. Who the fuck knows if that’s true, that movie’s drunk on bananas. But the idea with a lot of Hollywood is that you just train the astronaut - meaning you take a big actor and you train them extensively in whatever specific thing the role needs. Then they get however good they get in 3 months. Some do this exceptionally well (hello Mr. Day-Lewis). And some never actually learn how to convincingly throw a baseball (unsurprisingly, its most noticeable in sports movies). But when you go in the opposite direction with first time actors you cast for their unique skill? You are basically running into the opposite problem. With The Rider you’ll be able to watch professional Brady Jandreau working with a horse and see the expertise and nuance and know “oh gosh, this is so real and he is good at doing that!” And yet, with first timers in a dramatic scene it can be hard for them to even appear natural on camera. You’re also going to get poorly delivered lines. You’re even going to get whole bits that don’t work.

But one of the main reasons The Rider really works is because Brady is sort of a natural. For much of the film you see him carry this humble stoicism, but you always know what he’s feeling (in part because of the amazing construction of the story around him). But even when someone in the extended family gives a “poorly delivered” line reading, say from his father, that’s actually where the “authenticity” comes in strongest. Because you are able to watch it and go “well, that IS the person. They are playing themselves. So I guess it’s true?” Nowhere is this more evident than with Brady’s sister Lilly, who is autistic. Where so many other productions rely on actors “playing” autism, often with some broad understanding, here you have someone playing themselves - and better yet, you have Brady’s adoration of his real life sister in every frame. It’s deeply powerful.

Which is not to say this is some landmark matter of approach that every film should be doing. Ultimately, you’re talking about different routes to the same end goal. And if you do either well, you succeed.

And boy does The Rider succeed. It’s not just the verisimilitude of certain moments, like Brady watching the old videos, or the scar, or the plastic wrap in the shower. It captures something so much more humane. Like the way these subjects grow up in this masculine culture of rodeo, risking life and limb, and clearly wrestle with the vulnerabilities that come with their injuries. Or the way they’re not fully prepared as a culture to understand that “your brain is different than your ribs,” especially in a world that takes the sacrifice of everyone as some chaotic measure. I think about all the scenes where Brady bashfully tells people he’s “healing up” and how early on he means it versus when he says it again later, knowing it’s impossible. And knowing that he ultimately has to let things go. I also think about how Zhao developed the powerful tactic of having side characters basically looking to screen (but not TOO directly) and telling you their personal stories - it’s as elegant as I’ve ever seen that done. And then the film rides its conflict all the way into poetic metaphor, with the devastating moments of the horse and the barb wire -  capturing a young man trying to find his place between who he was, all cascading into the final image of him talking to his friend, but in essence, talking to himself…

I get goosebumps just thinking about it. The entire work is a testament to both Zhao’s approach and sense of authenticity. … but it comes with the admission that sometimes a given approach can not always hit… Or at least, that sometimes it both hits and misses.

4. lifelines

Upon seeing Nomadland, a friend asked, “why not make it a documentary?”

It’s an excellent question, but I think it immediately gets into the issue of practicality. Because the two mediums - documentary and narrative - grab people in different ways, but both ultimately rely on the drama of tension to be successful. Making an engaging documentary often means building off of tension of mystery and the sense of investigation, which is the reason why true crime always tends to be the most popular of the genre. Make a sad documentary about a person’s life and hardship? I can really be good! But if we’re going to be brutally honest, chances are not many people are going to see it. But tell a story about that person’s life in narrative form? Do an Erin Brockovich with it, if you will? Then the dramatic engagement of the same story goes up exponentially. You can interpret that reality cynically, but I think it speaks to the strengths of different narrative forms (and it's no accident the best non-investigative documentaries, like say Hoop Dreams, were reliant on incredible luck which give their stories a narrative-like shape). But even then, I think The Rider speaks to how Zhao’s real-subjects approach can work like gangbusters. But Nomadland introduces an interesting wrinkle of what happens when you put a famous actor with a wholly composite story at the center of that same exact approach.

To be clear, I don’t feel any singular way about the choice, nor its effect. I feel lots of things about it. Starting with the fact Frances McDormand is a dramatic heavyweight who needs no qualifiers for how good she is in the role. But perhaps more than normal, I would argue that she is dependent on the tonal construction around her. Because at times, the scenes read as deeply truthful. At other times, a bit forced. At other times I feel like I’m watching an incredible but famous actor trying to have a conversation with regular people. At other times, I’m watching her masterfully elevate the performance of the first timer in front of her. At other times, I’m suddenly confused when the great David Strathairn shows up because I didn’t know he was in it and thought she was the only professional. And at other times still, I’m marveling at how odd it is to watch her do Shakespeare in that way she’s trying to do it poorly / matter of factly, as her character would. Which all brings us to another level of question… Why cast that star in the first place?

Why not make another film around a central figure a la Brady Jandreau?

Well, because that’s how Hollywood works. Again, I genuinely don’t mean to be cynical when I say it, but it’s more a simple fact of life. The Rider thrives in independent circles and gets that attention from powerful stars, so the next logical step is to bring it one further up the power chain, often so you can just keep making your art. And whatever I personally argue about Nomadland’s effect, it clearly worked on a broad level. It won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress. Which means the choice is certainly valid in its emotional reach, but to what ultimate effect? That’s the whole thing. That kind of success unfortunately means the work becomes a lighting rod for scrutiny and deeper examination. So the real questions are: what is that scrutiny over? And is it a valid concern?

It’s only natural that a lot of the scrutinty ended up being political. Chiefly, the film’s depiction of Amazon, which is only one of the most politically loaded topics possible. I mean the company is the fucking devil and there isn’t much interest from people in humanizing the devil. But going back to the article she posits a simple counterargument, “Amazon, Zhao believes, is an easier villain than the structural issues that enable CamperForce to exist, which is why she filmed the warehouse scenes the same way she did the scenes of Fern cleaning toilets on a campground and shoveling beets in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. “If you look deeply, the issue of elder care as a casualty of capitalism is on every frame,” she says. “It’s just, yes, there’s the beautiful sunset behind it.”

It’s that last line may hit the real issue for some. Texturalists are gonna go apeshit about the sunset, seeing it as a romanticizing gesture over the naked brutality of what’s happening. Meanwhile, those with art-as-activism inclination are going to want the film to be an unrelenting dagger in the heart of capitalism and thus see the depiction as having a lack of teeth -, as if it’s all a big game where a CEO would watch this and go “see what we do is fine!” The truth is CEO’s don’t care if it’s not fine because being brutal is actually more appealing to investors because it will make them as much money as possible. For organized Socialists, they’re gonna see that the film has a pretty clear speech about the tyranny of the dollar and the benefits of banding together in socialist-like harmony, but doesn’t go so as to invoke that specific language of socialism, nor offer a rallying call for change in government. And meanwhile, literalists will take the lack of active on screen condemnation for, say, a work guy showing off his Confederate Flag tattoo and worry that it’s tacitly approving this.

On one hand, you can see the way that all of these absolutist takes are ruled by a kind of fear. I mean, I once wrote pretty starkly about the healthy need to express suicidal thoughts and have them be validated, all as a measure of relieving the incredible tension and that comes with that emotional space, and I STILL get people at-ing me in fury because “if you show any acceptance, any understanding, you are giving it room. You are letting it win.” Which is an utter failure to understand the way most mental health conditions work. But it’s a bit trickier with politics because... they’re kind of right?

Truth is I half-agree with a lot of this because there’s a bit of a texturalist, activist, socialist, and even literalist in me that feels those moments of pause. Especially in these dire times, where the soft-footed, hand-wavy nature of moderation, incrementalism, and fatalist acceptance has sent us on the slow path to oblivion. But I ALSO think the concerns detailed above aren’t wholly critical when it comes to what is most important to the depiction of THIS particular story. So instead, I want to zoom in on the problems of the actual story being told, what it’s aiming for, and where I feel like it misses. Because I believe there are two important problems on a basic narrative level. And the first is what I believe is a critical sociological point that gets missed regarding the nature of lifelines.

Now, to be clear, as a larger framework? I actually think Nomadland actually characterizes the dignity of being unhoused in a fairly compassionate and thoughtful way. Because every single time I see someone talk about the unhoused and wonder, “why are they not going to shelter?” They clearly never knew people who were unhoused - or spent time in a shelter - or, more importantly, ever thought about the emotional experience of it. Because the feeling of being swarmed into these massive rooms with cots and no privacy? Where it’s loud as fuck and poorly ventilated and often with others who are sick? You’re mostly likely to put up with it only when you need an emergency roof. But with a tent out on the street? With privacy and space for your own possessions? Heck, in some places you can create an actual sense of community with those around you. And if American shelters offered the equivalency of this sensation, believe me, the unhoused would happily use them, just like they are used in Scandinavian countries where you get to have a room of one’s own. And Nomadland so implicitly understands this headspace. Going a step further, the film also gives dignity to those who do indeed choose the nomadic life. I’ve mentioned that I worked at a campground during my young summers and you really get to know those people. I’ll specifically never forget this goofy dude and his girlfriend living in a tent way at the back of the campground. They were nomads because they had jobs as milk inspectors and he’d always tell me about the biggest offenders (I literally almost said the name of the company but then got super nervous???). The thing I always thought about was just how hard it was for them to do the basic tasks of life. I think about taking this one guy across town to do laundry. I think about how they were always on the edge of making it work. And there times they hit their economic breaking points and just didn’t have lifelines to continue… which brings us to my point.

There’s a moment where Fern’s van breaks down and she goes to her sister for money to help fix it. That’s the thing about being white and, well, even on the lower level of middle class… there’s usually a person in your orbit that you can probably go to for 2000 dollars if you are in a jam. It may not be comfortable. It may come with strings. It may take a bit of swallowing pride (I mean, I literally am putting off calling someone I have to do that with right now). But you can do it. And the film captures the feelings of this so succinctly, same for the reasons Fern can’t settle back with family or sleep in that childhood bed. I know that feeling so intensely (often because there is a way that place was traumatic). But for all that understanding, there is the matter of the 2000 dollars itself...

… and how many people in this country can’t do that.

That is to say how many people have the car break down moment (or something comparable) and that stops their journey in a real, tangible way. Or leads to matters of desperation and debt that accelerates their poverty into a form of outright wage slavery forever. In short, the van ride ends for most people (even in The Rider, Brady HAS to work at the supermarket as the next logical step). And I can’t stop thinking about how that hangs on the edge of everything we see but never gets brought up in the film. This should be the exact moment of understanding the outrageous luck and humbleness that comes with being wealth-adjacent - and yet it seems more fixating on the declaration of freedom in spite of it… And I have to ask “why?” Perhaps because it is an unimaginable idea to someone who doesn’t realize that those lifelines aren’t available for the vast majority of people? I truly don’t know. I don’t know how you can make a film about the death rattle of those without a dollar and center the story on someone who has the lifeline and the choice. But I *do* know that in a film like Minari that existential threat hangs over everything in the film. That understands that access to money in an emergency is the difference between a personal choice and a reckoning… and I worry about any narrative about poverty that doesn’t seem to understand that.

The second issue is perhaps far more important because it deals with the heart of her character. Where The Rider’s central character and his authenticity are so driven into the central framework of the story, with Nomadland I can’t help but feel like the biggest strengths are on the periphery. In that I feel like the three most powerful parts of the narrative are brief asides with other characters (Swankie, Bob, and Linda) where they each basically tell their personal trauma right to camera. Yes, there were a few scenes like this in The Rider too, but those felt like extensions of Brady’s same exploration. But this is where the “Frances Mcdormand-ness” of it all just hits me. On one level, I genuinely think she won an Oscar for being “best listener” to these other folks (which I don’t say cynically, it’s a skill). But not only does their authenticity put her unreality in contrast, it also highlights the fact her fictional journey ALSO leaves me in want delivering something with that kind of power. And what prevents that is how the narrative makes a critical structural mistake, in that it does the classic goof where it waits to have her clearly articulate her “initial motivations'' with regards to “keeping her husband’s memory alive” until the end of the movie - which is honestly a way you get to pretend you had an arc when actually you’re just withholding crucial starting information. And I think it really needed that clarity with her character to help drive the personal choices she makes through the film, at least if you want them to be meaningful to us along the way. In The Rider you are hit right up front with the utter specifics of his injury and wants, which allows the film to play the edge of internal conflict from minute one. But here the construction only hints, subtly keeping you at bay. And without it, there is only the nice emotion of the film’s texture and surrounding stories to buoy you.

Which obviously can still get you far (like Best Picture far). But the same thing was true of Crash, so I don’t really use that as a barometer for much. Nor do I think Nomadland is anywhere near the Crash ballpark, let alone a work of dysfunction. It’s a good film - with variant elements I very much like, but it also can’t help but make me pine for the perfection of her predecessor, even though I understand why this works better in the Hollywood hubbub.

Which brings us to the fact that one of my greatest concerns of this real-people tactic is the way that approach also gets swept up in Hollywood award season and all the hollowness that goes with it. In the same article Zhao talks about her relief in using non-actors as this: “Most nonprofessional actors aren’t going to go on to be actors. Their career isn’t going to be benefiting from this,” she says. “You sleep better if you give them support that way.” Which I agree with in part and yet sometimes I can’t help but worry about when it comes to the way the Hollywood machine will swallow you up anyway. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve checked up on Barkhad Abdi from Captain Phillips or Yalitza Aparicio from Roma just to be sure things are okay. We have big cautionary tales of this ilk. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is one of my favorite movies and makes use of the real life story of Harold Russell, who lost both his hands in the war. He later had to sell his Oscar just to pay his bills.  The point being Hollywood has a bad track record of using your trauma for esteem and then very easily moving on, while those artists go on to make a lot of money.

But none of these things are a singular, dominant story when it comes to Nomadland, just apart of my endless swirl of concerns and questions that go along with it. I find myself equally defensive or critical of it, depending on the conversation. I think cynics like Schrader can call it “fake poverty” perhaps not realizing how much of the film is the complete opposite of fake. I think there’s valid questions about whether McDormand’s choices (done with lifelines) can romanticize the lifestyle that others have to deal with differently. I think the film doesn’t try to talk down to its subjects about the death rattle of capitalism but lets them speak for whatever they actually feel. I think about whether or not Linda got to build her earth spaceship. I think about what happens when we’re talking about Frances playing Lady MacBeth in a few months and whether people will remember the other characters names. I think Zhao seems come to come at all this with zero ego. I think about how zero ego is basically impossible. I think about whether Zhao being an outsider makes her the perfect person to tell these stories or the worst? Or perhaps both? Or neither? I think of the way singular perspectives shape most of this.

I was talking fairly recently with a filmmaker from Singapore, who has to deal so much with censorship and cultural silence - and they were talking about how much they at least appreciated that America TALKED about its stark differences, while of course also honoring the brutal cost of that strife. But it’s a thing we don’t see because we’re in it.  Point is, it’s a matter of perspective - and the way that marries to a version of our understanding. So while we get wrapped up in all these conversations about authenticity of storytelling, it belies the more important fact all together…

Authenticity is a myth.

5. showing your strings

Oops, I’m going to talk about food.

Because the word “authentic” is a really loaded one when it comes to the world of cuisine. On a broad level, you likely get the way that the notion can be kind of amusing. People come to the city and want “a real New York slice of pizza!” and instead of going to Joe’s, they go to some random street corner that could have mediocre pizza at best. Hell, there are entire places that prey on this inclination. But it’s far more problematic when it comes to how it plays into the way we talk about immigrant food cultures. For instance, let’s take Chinese American cuisine. Many Americans grew up thinking “Chinese food” was Beef & Broccoli or Crab Rangoon, both designed to be more pleasing to American tastes - but those same cooks were likely making “more traditional” food at home.

But then the quest for “more authentic” became what was hip in an exploding foodie culture, which suddenly got way more adventurous - and yet possibly just as misguided. Because is Beef and Broccoli somehow less authentic? Is it not a valid creation, born out of cultural symbiosis and created by Chinese immigrant cooks? O is crab rangoon a horrible bastardization because it likely came from Trader Vics? And for all the adventurousness, for every person who doesn’t need a translation of xiā jiǎo on a dim sum menu, there are those who desire traditional Chinese food with all the grace of saying “you know, like from China”. Or those who even, say, go to Macau on business and want “traditional Chinese dishes” and be shocked how much Portuguese influence there is in the food. I’m using so many quotation marks in this because the aim of authenticity is a fool's errand. Really understanding the history just teaches you that everything is a product of change and influence throughout that history. So no matter which way you’re cutting it, if you strive for “authentic” in a singular sense - you’re likely erasing the influence of something on that something.

So as an artist, your authentic voice is something you have to define for yourself.

For chefs, that means you connect your experience with your interests. A guy grows up loving New England seafood, comes here to the west coast, cooks in much of the same way, but uses local ingredients. Maybe takes touches of inspirations around the world. That’s an authentic narrative of creation. But another white New England guy like Alex Stupak falls in love with the food of Mexico and is like “I’m gonna do “authentic” Mexican food and charge a fortune!” You do that and, well, you’re going to invite criticism because using / aping another culture’s food and making it hip for white consumption. Especially when charging a fortune. These decisions matter too, because the food world easily creates butterfly effects. Osteria Mozza creates a great Orecchiette dish. Four years later the pasta is sold in every supermarket. Coffee shops in LA switch from soy to almond milk, and then to oat milk. The country follows suit, not realizing these shifts dramatically alter the entire landscapes of third world nations, often removing a crucial ingredient from their local cuisines because it’s now worth too much to the U.S. for them to afford it, so it all goes. Simply put, these things matter. Everything you do is part of a story of influence and effect - how are you approaching it, what are you honoring, whether you are really honoring it, and most importantly, understanding what it really creates in its wake. The simple truth that *everything* is a part of construction.

This is equally true of filmmaking.

The problem is how much we don’t like thinking of the construction part first. We just want the naked emotional experience. Which is often why people talk about the problem with “seeing the strings” with a given filmmaker or a choice they make. Totally understandable! But my argument is that every single film on the planet has strings at every moment. It’s ALL artificial. And there are reasons and choices behind every single bit of it, even if they’re sometimes vague. But since cinema-goers often worship the notion of “falling into story” it becomes this odd barrier that cuts in different directions. Because there’s lots of ways to make people fall into a story. And what “bumps” people out of a story is always different.

And what makes Nomadland so fascinating to me is the way it reflects basically all of these ideas. Realism. Authenticity. Politics. Authorship. Identity. You can see the strings of any of it and convincingly come down in any direction and I would probably go “yeah, fair.” It’s a prism for how we process so much about both art, politics, and culture. And so I ask all those same questions yet again: What is a duty of a filmmaker? What stories can we tell? What are important stories to tell? What is their relationship to this story? And to her credit, I think Zhao is probably more aware of it than anyone. In fact, we know this because she talks about it plainly in the same article:

“The Oglala Lakota reservation of Pine Ridge is one of the largest in the U.S. and contains some of the country’s poorest counties. Journalists and artists had been making the trip there for long enough that the residents were adept, Zhao quickly discovered, at telling her what they thought she wanted to hear — stories of poverty, alcoholism, historical trauma. “It took me a good six months to a year to get past that. If I had just dipped in and out, I would never have,” she says. She still had a place in New York but was spending long stretches in South Dakota getting to know people. “Let’s talk about what you have for dinner,” she would say. “What did you really have for dinner? What do you want me to say you have for dinner?”

Stick around long enough, she found, and people have no choice but to be rude and real. She subbed for the teacher of a creative-writing class at a local high school, and the students wrote about wanting to work on everything from animation to horror movies. When the time came to apply for indie filmmaking grants, though, they invariably turned toward stories of struggle. “I was like, ‘What happened to the zombie apocalypse?’ ”

It was frustrating to her. “That’s not progress, to have to tell a certain kind of story to fit into this film festival.” Yet that’s often what’s required when you’re making a pitch for relevance to cultural institutions.”

And to just keep quoting the vulture article, but it’s totally that thing where you are writing an essay and found an article that directly brings up your exact concerns (and is better written) so it makes far more sense to just keep quoting from it, along with Zhao’s response:

“Willi White, an Oglala Lakota filmmaker and community organizer who lives on the reservation, recalls thinking when he watched Songs My Brothers Taught Me. “It fell into those tropes a lot of us have started our careers around, which was taking back our narratives — playing into the poverty porn.”

That remains the impossible battle at the heart of representation: wanting to acknowledge the wounds that exist and to draw attention to neglect and oppression while trying not to be reduced to those things on screen, to escape from the expectations of miserablism. Zhao has been thinking a little differently about her place outside American consciousness and the pains of its history. “I should take those things into consideration because they are deeply rooted in the psyches of people who grew up here, not in mine,” she says. “In the end, we leave, but their lives continue.”

This is the whole thing. Because ultimately the most important questions of “wealth” and “authenticity,” whatever those might mean, are not so much as questions for critics, but questions for Zhao herself.

Because as incredible as The Rider is at capturing and living in the world of its subject, there’s no such thing as a pure, objective documentariaran. There’s that personal drive in everything we do. And with Nomadland I can’t help but think about her own wandering, expressive life of journeying around the world. To be frank, there’s probably a great essay about how this film fits in with the idea of being a third culture kid, but I am certainly not the person to write that. And if there is that connection, I can’t help but wonder: is Nomadland really the right vehicle for that exploration? Does it inherently make it more about the choice of living a more free life independent from a certain grandness of wealth instead of wandering in the barren wasteland of crushing capitalism? And what’s more pressing is this issue: Jessica Bruder’s original book version of Nomadland apparently takes DEAD AIM at Amazon for its horrible practices.  It doesn’t see the company as strawman. The truth is that Amazon is so big and powerful that it largely dictates those very systemic problems in the first place. So why make the choice to see it as the easier villain? Or is it just easier just not to poke the bear? Which means I just can’t stop thinking about what is and isn’t left up on screen.

I know the following are radically different movies, but they are playing in the exact same space. And to me, the ultimate genius of Sullivan’s Travels is not just that it calls out hypocrisy in every direction, but it is also deeply self-critical. And it slides it’s own dramatic thrust right in while you aren’t looking. As funny as it is, Preston isn’t making the “an empty comedy” he’s so fond of. In fact, the initial train car fight with it’s overwrought symbolism is something that actually ends up in the film, albeit as a sneakier and funnier version. But one just as thematically meaningful. And think about that ending: to really grow, Sullivan effectively has to “kill” his old naive self to literally be set free. Because in the end, trying to “understand poverty” is the quest of being humbled above all else. And what speaks to us most is that all of these infinite complications are right up on screen.

Most people who see Nomadland aren’t going to really know anything about how it was made, or who Chloe Zhao is, nor will they care. So we can talk about all this circumstantial crap until the cows come home, but the main communication point, that is the thing most audiences will take with them, is the emotional message of the movie itself. So did you actually show what you need to up on screen? And should you have?

Because all the issues we’re talking about here will never really disappear. The questions that come with wealth documenting poverty will always oscillate in an ever moving, ever changing game of optics; one we are both are beholden to and yet need to transcend in the same exact instance. And in that pursuit, any artist doesn’t just have my sympathy, but my empathy. Also my curiosity. Because I actually think Zhao is maybe the most interesting filmmaker in the world right now, at least from a critical view - and I’m so deeply curious to see the way her approach works in the Marvel machine, along with what lessons she’s learning and where she goes next. But with curiosity comes all the scrutinizing questions that go with it. Which is probably apt. Because the older I get? The longer I write? The more often I leave films without any declarations of certainty. More just that gnawing curiosity...

And I guess I want to know what these travels were really about.

<3HULK