Nomadland
Nominated Producers: Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey and Chloé Zhao
Director: Chloé Zhao
Writer: Chloé Zhao (based on the book by Jessica Bruder)
Cast: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Bob Wells, Swankie Wheels, others.
Plot: Fern is houseless, not homeless. In another life, her husband worked for the gypsum plant that sustained the entire town of Empire, Nevada. Now her husband is dead, and the plant is closed. In fact, the entire town is gone. Not even the zip code remains. That chapter of her life has ended, but Fern chooses not to move on. Instead of relocating to a new town and taking on the burden of financing housing she can’t afford, Fern choses another path. To honor her late husband’s memory, she continues the life they built together as best she can.
She’s made a cozy home for herself inside an old van that she calls Vanguard, and as she moves from place to place seeking seasonal employment, she happens upon a likeminded community of other itinerant workers (most white retirees) also living in their vehicles. They call themselves Nomads (a cheerier rebranding of an existence that could be described in less adventurous terms). Most can’t afford to stop working, even though they are often elderly and (sometimes) infirm. Some employers take advantage of their desperation, giving them inadequate wages for thankless work, yet these Nomads have still found a way to live life on their own terms. Not everyone is in the desert (literally and spiritually) for monetary reasons. Some people are on other kinds of journeys, processing feelings, working through grief, finding themselves. The movement is about spiritual richness as much as physical poverty.
The fascinating thing about this film is that while Fern is played by two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand, almost all of the other characters are actual, self-proclaimed Nomads, real people playing themselves, most of them (like Linda May, Bob Wells, and Swankie) made famous as interview subjects writer Jessica Bruder profiled in her non-fiction book Nomadland.
Why It Should Win:
I just finished reading Bruder’s book, and now I’m impressed by how much Nomadland reminds me of Crazy Rich Asians in that the excellent movie and its equally compelling source material are of completely different genres. (If you haven’t read/watched Crazy Rich Asians, you’re missing out. The book is biting satire, the movie, heart-warming romantic comedy. Though tonally book and film are hardly alike, both works are excellent.)
Similarly, Bruder’s Nomadland is mostly a journalistic exploration of a movement that has arisen in response to a grave societal problem. Numerous elderly people are losing their homes and being forced to live full-time in their vehicles. They’re of retirement age, but they can’t afford to retire. Unfortunately, because of their age, no one will offer them stable, consistent work for a living wage. They’re making the best of it, and Bruder’s book does catalogue and celebrate their small, hard earned successes. But much of the book is dedicated to taking a good hard look at how the system has failed these Americans, and how the employers who will take them on routinely exploit them. Bruder herself spends some time living as a Nomad, facing the dangers of “stealth camping” and experiencing the grueling, punishing work-load of helping with the beet harvest or spending time in Amazon’s CamperForce program.
Writer/director Chloé Zhao still mentions most of these challenges, but in the film adaptation of Nomadland, her focus is quite different. Honestly Zhao elevates material that is already strong by adding a spiritual element to the story. A movie version of Bruder’s book could have been a muck-raking exposé, but Zhao makes her film something more than this.
Her protagonist Fern (played by Frances McDormand) has family and options. She doesn’t have to live in her van. The Nomad’s life is something that Fern choses. She choses to wander this road less traveled by because it keeps her life in a kind of holding pattern. She’s on a perpetual journey, and so are many of her fellow Nomads. She’s not ready to arrive. Fern doesn’t want to move forward because her husband can’t move forward with her. He has died. She keeps his memory alive by continuing to live just as she did when he was alive. At first this means hanging around the same town where he worked for years in a gypsum plant. Then the plant shuts down, and the town immediately disappears. But moving to a new town would mean moving forward without her husband. So Fern doesn’t go to a new town. She just goes. And goes. And goes. She lives to honor her husband’s memory, to keep him alive by her actions as long as she can. She’s not ready to move on, so the open road is very attractive.
And Fern is not the only Nomad looking for higher meaning out in the desert. Many of her fellow van dwellers are on paths of purgation, purifying themselves through the journey, atoning for some past mistake by making themselves into someone they can forgive. Others want to avoid something, to forget pain, or to process ongoing grief. They’re in the wilderness both literally and metaphorically, and most of them seem to be there for very personal reasons. Financial hardship is only one factor, and not everything about that life is negative. In some ways, the Nomad’s life is tremendously rewarding.
If you’re in mourning yourself or facing any kind of spiritual crossroads or metaphysical crisis, then you might find more meaning than you expect in Nomadland. Yes, we should feel compassion for those who fall on hard times financially, and we should also be willing to ask hard questions about our broken society and demand accountability where social injustice has been allowed to flourish. But the film is about more than that.
Nomadland has an excellent shot at winning Best Picture, and I hope it also wins Best Cinematography. Joshua James Richards feels like a shoe-in for the award. The American West has never looked so stark, so haunted, so inviting. I’d love to take a trek across these eerie landscapes myself. (I’ve actually been through Quartzsite several times. I remember being aghast at the price of a Happy Meal there, as if McNuggets were made of gold!) The score is haunting and melodic, too. My husband was so disappointed to learn that because Ludovico Einaudi’s gorgeous music was not written specifically for the film, it is ineligible for an Oscar for Best Original Score. That doesn’t detract from the power of the music, though. Nomadland highlights what initially seems like a sad cultural phenomenon, and yet at times it plays like an enticing tourism commercial for the West.
Frances McDormand’s acting is top notch, too, subtle yet powerful. She’s so convincing as one of the Nomads that during filming, many of the actual Nomads had no idea she was an actress. Though deserving SAG winner Viola Davis looks more likely to win Best Actress at this point, McDormand also has an opportunity to win an Oscar for this film as one of its nominated producers.
Why It Shouldn’t Win:
Nomadland has one weird characteristic. Almost all of the characters are white. It’s pretty hard not to notice this while watching the movie, and Jessica Bruder even briefly addresses the issue in her book. Bruder points out that “stealth camping” and “just passing through town” for extended periods might be a pulse-pounding thrill for some of us and a good way to get arrested or murdered for others. She also reveals that while living as a Nomad herself to research the book, she did observe some instances of racism in the community, in which white Nomads made those of other races feel unwelcome. But she has also seen other white Nomads rebuke and repudiate such distasteful behavior.
Apparently, most of the real-life Nomads are white. And since Bruder’s book and Zhao’s film document a real-life phenomenon, that’s just the way it is. My impression is not that the Nomads featured in this film are racist (and certainly not that the filmmakers are racist). But I do sense an importance to the fact that most Nomads seem to be white. To me, styling oneself a Nomad seems to some degree like a desperate rebranding and a way of distinguishing oneself from other itinerant workers who have fallen on misfortunes. In the past, much of society has looked down on migrant workers (who travel around following seasonal work, doing things like picking fruit, for instance). Now, in our time, the same people who grew up in a society that looked down on itinerant workers find themselves by necessity doing those very jobs and living that same lifestyle. When these people were growing up, the prosperous members of society didn’t live in such a way, and most of the prosperous members of society were white. So this shift must feel profoundly disorienting to these present-day Nomads. They don’t want to dwell on the idea that their society has let them down, that in their golden years, they are the ones doing the type of work that society taught them to look down on when they were children. So they wrap themselves in a protective mythos. (Living in the wild is lots of fun if you’re Davy Crockett!)
My impression is that these people are not particularly racist. But in their formative years, American society in general was quite racist, whether individuals intended harm with their misguided views or not. So they proactively call themselves Nomads and embrace the lifestyle because they don’t want to be called any less pleasant names that they heard growing up.
There’s something else, too. To be fair to the Nomads, they make a good, solid point. The American Dream—at least the way it has become warped by runaway capitalism and is usually offered to us—makes absolutely no sense. We’re raised to be consumers and wasters and perpetual debtors. Why should we live like that? Why even have mortgages? Some inner voice must whisper, “Because to live in your vehicle is shameful.” So the Nomads ask boldly, “Why is it shameful?” Not having wealth is shameful? How much wealth will you amass by working for somebody else’s company, always taking out a bigger mortgage, digging yourself into debt buying products you don’t actually need? The Nomads are saying, “Hey, wait! This is a con!” They’re right. Now perhaps circumstances have forced them to these radical ideas. It’s not the pure desire for clear thinking that leads most to this path. It’s financial ruin and lack of other options. So Nomads are born in reaction to the mainstream American culture in which they are raised, and mainstream American culture has always been racist. But I don’t think the Nomads are necessarily racist (certainly not moreso than anyone else). It is weird that the movement, on the whole, is so notably white, however. It’s impossible not to notice.
(If you’re going to protest that director Chloé Zhao is Chinese, yes, of course, I know that. I’m not saying that it’s a racist film. I’m saying that the film focuses on a real community that could be racist, and that some voters might find even that possibility distasteful. Even if the Nomads are not racist, the fact that they accidentally include so few members of other races among their ranks might make the group somewhat irrelevant in some voters’ eyes. I don’t feel that way myself, but some people might. And you might ask, too, is Jessica Bruder sure there aren’t other groups of Nomad-like travelers that are more racially diverse? If there are, why did she limit her study to the mainly white groups? But, maybe there aren’t.)
The other, more problematic charge some have made against the film is that it glosses over the unsavoriness of Amazon’s practices as an employer to these Nomads. In the movie, Amazon CamperForce seems to offer dull, uninspiring work, yes, but it also provides RV hookups and a convenient way for the elderly and itinerant to make extra money. It’s not glamorous, but it meets a need. The reality presented in Jessica Bruder’s book is very different. In the book (which I bought from Amazon, by the way), the CamperForce program actually seems quite sinister, vaguely Orwellian. An entire movie could be made about the abuses of that program alone. Technically, of course, the company does everything by the letter within the bounds of the law, but it’s hard not to come away with the feeling that a great moral wrong is being done to this nation’s elderly. Instead of retiring, many of these people are over seventy years old, working in harsh conditions, given impossible tasks, asked to do intense heavy-lifting, kept on their feet for punishingly long periods, expected to work inside warehouses where the temperature can exceed ninety degrees, not always given sufficient bathroom breaks. Bruder paints a very discouraging portrait of the entire program. The movie backs way off. (Perhaps they wanted permission to film inside an actual Amazon warehouse? Perhaps real-life Nomads weren’t willing to speak disparagingly of Amazon on camera because they still needed employment there? Just my own ideas.)
Now in fairness, Amazon isn’t the real problem. Or, at least, Amazon isn’t the only problem. It’s the collapse of our entire society that is to blame here. Amazon, at least, offers work to these people unable to secure employment elsewhere (often because of age discrimination). Still, Zhao’s movie glosses over many of the sketchy, unsavory aspects of working for Amazon’s CamperForce that Bruder describes in clear and precise detail in her book.
But leaving all potential scandal and practical considerations aside, Nomadland simply may not be to everyone’s taste. Its narrative structure is unconventional. The plot is simply that McDormand’s Fern is wandering through life, driving around, making fleeting but powerful connections with new people, finding belonging in an unexpected community, learning to listen to silences, trying to process her grief, looking for meaning, cleaning campgrounds, flipping burgers, getting lost in nature, occasionally smiling by a pointless stone dinosaur. (That dinosaur doesn’t make any sense at all to me. If it’s for staged photographs, why put an ugly fence around it?) This is just not going to be everybody’s thing.
In general, I think the film works much better for people who are over forty, extra points if you’ve recently lost a loved one and frequently brood about the meaning of life and death. My daughter, who is only twelve, liked it less than most other 2020 Oscar films she’s seen, which I find not at all surprising. It isn’t a story for the young.
Still, Nomadland has already won a staggering number of prizes for Best Picture, and it has an excellent chance of winning Best Picture at the Oscars, too (which would mean a third Oscar for Frances McDormand, who is a nominated producer). It’s a strong, unique, powerful film that no one would regret voting for in the future. And yet, it’s hard not to believe that some more exciting, plot-driven film won’t sneak in at the eleventh hour and nab the biggest prize of the night. That’s what usually happens.
Promising Young Woman
Nominated Producers: Ben Browning, Ashley Fox, Emerald Fennell and Josey McNamara
Director: Emerald Fennell
Writer: Emerald Fennell
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Laverne Cox, Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Adam Brody, Chris Lowell, Connie Britton, and others.
Plot: Cassandra Thomas used to be a promising young medical student. Now she works in a coffee shop. She’s thirty. She lives with her parents. They don’t like the way she wastes her days. They would be horrified if they knew what she does with her nights. Cassie makes a regular practice of visiting clubs, then staggering home with self-proclaimed “nice guys” when they notice she’s too drunk to function. Invariably these seeming Good Samaritans attempt to take advantage of her. They’re usually quite surprised and dismayed when Cassie reveals that she is not, in fact, intoxicated at all.
This punishing nighttime ritual offers Cassie hints of comfort, but when an old friend from med school (now a doctor) happens to wander into her coffee shop and bring back old memories, she realizes that she needs more. She needs true catharsis, real revenge for a crime that happened a long time ago, an incident that most people have chosen not to remember.
Why It Should Win:
Promising Young Woman is my favorite film of 2020. Writer/director Emerald Fennell keeps winning awards for her fantastic screenplay, a trend which I hope continues. Original Screenplay is packed full of worthy contenders this year, but Promising Young Woman is the film I’d most like to teach in a parallel life.
Though it appears to flirt with several genres, start-to-finish Promising Young Woman is a revenge tragedy, something we don’t realize until after we’ve experienced the film’s final act. Fennell’s film cleverly plays off our society’s disheartening habit of victim blaming/shaming. When we’re first introduced to Cassandra Harris (brilliantly played by an Oscar-worthy Carey Mulligan), we can be forgiven for viewing her as a predator, perhaps a serial killer on the hunt for prey. Fennell pulls out all the stops, using cinematic and literary conventions to suggest that Cassie is wicked and dangerous. We find her appealing, but, like the men she targets, we also find her scary. What makes her scary? She flouts societal conventions. Men are alarmed when someone they have considered an easy mark (i.e., a girl at a club too inebriated to function) is actually completely sober and hunting them. She’s scary because she isn’t what she appears to be. She’s scary because she looks them dead in the eye and tells them that they’re doing something wrong. That’s not how it’s supposed to work for men. That’s not how our society is set up.
As we watch Cassie engage in her nightly routine, the film gives us repeated clues that she is dangerous, that she is harming (perhaps killing) these victims (naïve enough to mistake her for the victim). But there’s a brilliant twist in store for us. Cassie isn’t killing these men at all. Like the doomed Trojan prophetess Cassandra, she’s simply telling them the unwelcome truth. And the film goes further until we finally discover that this person we have been mistaking for a villain was actually the victim all along. We’re not watching the story of a heartless killer at all. We’re watching the prelude to a woman’s murder.
Unable to recover psychologically from the horrific violation of her best friend, Cassie becomes a victim twice over, finding peace only after she herself is murdered (by the very same person who raped her friend). Think of how often those who bring accusations of rape and harassment have their names dragged through the mud in court and in the media as a classic strategy of discrediting them to let their rapist go unpunished. In the film, a character played by Alfred Molina even explicitly spells out this common legal strategy for us, recalling (with pain and guilt) his time as a successful defense attorney when he slandered rape victims, destroying their reputations to save their rapists from criminal convictions. Fennell’s movie explicitly reminds us of this strategy while at the same time using it on us, making us complicit in the victim blaming. We’re always fascinated by Cassie, but in the beginning, we think she’s some kind of serial killer. In fact, she’s a woman suffering the psychological after-effects of her friend’s rape and subsequent death, and eventually she is murdered by the same rapist who ruined her life in the first place. She’s the victim. She was never anything else. All of her posturing of power has been a defense mechanism, allowing her to continue to function as she processes past trauma. She’s not the bad guy at all, and maybe we’re a bit bad for believing that of her.
She’s also an avenging angel. In the end, Cassie ends up exacting the perfect revenge. What does she do? Not much. Essentially, she tells the truth about what happened again and again. Some people involved experience remorse and attempt to atone for their role in her friend’s rape. The rapist experiences not remorse but fear of larger discovery of his crimes. In the end, he brings about his own destruction by murdering Cassie. After all, she can’t stop him. She’s not actually a serial killer, remember. Still, she’s the cause of his undoing. All she does is tell the truth to the right people at the right times. The guilty party destroys his own life by murdering Cassie who has made sure he will not get away with it.
I love the way this film explores how uncomfortable we feel when people behave in unexpected ways and shows us how easy it is to make a victim look like a villain. The title, of course, plays off the description of the rapist Brock Turner as a “promising young man,” the implication being that if a man does not deserve to have his own crimes destroy his life, then surely his victims also do not deserve to have his crimes destroy their lives, either. Even though she has dropped out of medical school because of the assault of her friend, Cassie is not the only “promising young woman,” of the title, which could also refer to her late friend, Nina Fisher. It’s worth noting, too, that Cassie fulfills her promise, both an unspoken promise of loyalty to Nina and the promise she shows in achieving her goals through dutiful preparation. In the past, her goal was to become a doctor, but for several years now, her goal has been justice for Nina. That is what she focuses on, and, since she is just as promising as she always was when properly understood, that is what she achieves. (There is always the darker implication, too, that in a society where every “promising young man” rapes with impunity, a woman fulfills her promise by becoming the victim of such a man.)
Carey Mulligan gives a star-making performance sure to be a highlight of her career. I hope she wins the Oscar, though Viola Davis’s SAG win makes that seem less likely now. (To be fair, Davis is magnificent, too. In fact, I think one reason I was so underwhelmed by Vanessa Kirby is that I had just been blown away by Davis the week before.) The supporting cast is also good, and the soundtrack is exceptional, incorporating pop music and other familiar songs in unique and creative ways, serving both the story and the songs in a way we never expected.
Why It Shouldn’t Win:
Promising Young Woman is my favorite film of 2020. That’s a big strike against it. I can count on one hand how often my favorite Best Picture nominee actually wins Best Picture. The Departed. One. Well, if I think back a bit further, I’m sure there are others. I remember rooting for The Silence of the Lambs pretty hard when I was in junior high. Don’t get me wrong. I’m usually pretty satisfied with the winner, but it’s almost never the film I would have picked myself.
This movie is certainly of the moment, but it may not have the broad appeal necessary to win Best Picture. Some voters may dismiss it as a glossy thriller or dressed up rom-com (which it certainly is not) and not consider it the right kind of film to win an Oscar. It also may be legitimately triggering to some voters, making it hard for them to watch. The film made quite a splash back when it first premiered, but sadly it seems to be losing support instead of picking up steam. I’d be over the moon if the movie somehow won, but while I was up there, you’d see the most dramatic expression of genuine shock plastered all over my face. A win that big just feels unlikely for this movie.
Of course, maybe I’m wrong about Promising Young Woman’s chances. The film is nominated for Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Original Screenplay (a category where Emerald Fennell has a good chance of winning). Though it has only five nominations, they’re in really key categories. Its nominations for directing and editing strongly suggest that had there been only five Best Picture nominees this year, Promising Young Woman would still have made the cut. Maybe nobody’s giving it enough credit. Maybe the vote will split in some crazy way resulting in an unexpected victor. Promising Young Woman has the right kind of credentials to pull off a surprise win. I just don’t think that it will happen (though I’d be thrilled if it did).
Sound of Metal
Nominated Producers: Bert Hamelinck and Sacha Ben Harroche
Director: Darius Marder
Writers: Darius Marder and Abraham Marder
Cast: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Chelsea Lee, Mathieu Amalric, and others.
Plot: Ruben loves his music. He also loves his girlfriend whose sustaining support helped him stop using drugs. He loves their life together, touring the country, living in their van, performing punk rock together. She sings, and he’s the drummer. For as long as Ruben’s life has been good, this has been the music of that life.
But now he’s deaf. He’s not just going deaf. One day his hearing gets a little wonky, and then very suddenly, it’s all but gone.
Now Ruben might lose everything. If he can’t hear, how can he drum? If he can’t drum, how can he play for his girlfriend? If they can’t make music together, why would she stay with him? If he doesn’t have her love to sustain him, how can he function? How can he keep himself sober? What if he starts using again?
When Ruben reaches a breaking point, his girlfriend and his sponsor help him find a place to seek clarity and needed rest, a special program specifically designed for deaf addicts. The thing is, he must stay in residence there alone. There’s no place for his girlfriend. To move forward in his new life, he’ll have to take the terrifying step of leaving his old life behind, at least for a little while.
But maybe none of this has to be permanent. When talking with a doctor early on, Ruben heard of an experimental surgery that could restore his hearing. Of course, he didn’t hear the details very well. After all, he’s deaf. But he knows that’s what he wants. He’s sure that’s what he wants. Never mind what’s best for him. Ruben needs the life he wants. He’ll find a way to fix everything.
Why It Should Win:
Like Nomadland, Sound of Metal is a surprisingly spiritual film. Guiding a small but flourishing program for deaf addicts in recovery, Paul Raci’s Joe might as well be the Oracle at Delphi. Ruben shows up a jittery, shaken mess, desperate for some way to fix his future, and the answer he gets is basically, “Know thyself.” Joe wants to help Ruben find peace. He believes the solution to Ruben’s turmoil isn’t to undo his deafness, but rather to accept it, which will give him the freedom to move forward with his life. The last conversation between the two of them is heart breaking, yet even when Ruben fails himself, a good life is still waiting for him to claim when he is ready. In its profound final scene, Sound of Metal shows us not only the beauty the world has to offer to Ruben as a deaf man, but also that such a life will always be there for him even if he blunders on his way to it. We can all take comfort and inspiration in the idea that even deaf, Ruben is whole. He faces not a ruined future, but merely a different one. That powerful final scene reminded me fondly of Into Great Silence, a documentary about a community of monks voluntarily living as quietly as possible.
But what I liked even more were the noisy parts of the film. Riz Ahmed gives an Oscar-worthy (and Oscar nominated) lead performance, showing us the fear in Ruben’s eyes as he goes into panic mode and scrambles to hold on to the vestiges of his rapidly changing life. In one of my favorite scenes, Ruben goes berserk, violently smashing up his own possessions in the van in which he and his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) live while she watches in helpless terror. He’s been carrying around such terror himself, and finally it all comes out. My other favorite scene comes when he attends an extremely cacophonous (for him) cocktail party. Ahmed makes Ruben so relatable in these scenes. I could feel the intensity of his emotions, as if I had experienced identical situations and understood them intimately (which is not actually the case). In another year, Ahmed would surely have a decent shot at actually winning Best Actor. It’s a very strong performance, the best I’ve seen him give. (Of course, this is probably because it’s the best part I’ve seen him play. In my experience of his work, Ahmed always gives excellent performances.)
Nominated supporting actor Paul Raci introduces a fascinating element to the film through his very presence. I will confess I have never once before this movie thought about what it is like to be a veteran who is deaf and an addict. (Raci is actually only two of these things. He’s a recovering alcoholic who served in the Vietnam War, but he’s not deaf in real life. He’s the hearing child of two deaf parents, fascinating in its own right.) Until seeing Raci play Joe, I never even thought about these overlapping issues, but surely a number of combat veterans have returned struggling with both damaged hearing and addiction. Combat itself could damage hearing and aggravate inherited tendencies toward addiction. That’s a corner of the world I’ve never thought to explore.
Olivia Cooke and Mathieu Amarlric also give compelling supporting performances as Ruben’s girlfriend and her wealthy father. And (again like Nomadland) the film also features the talents of a number of people who are actually members of the community they represent on screen (i.e., they are deaf in real life).
The film’s title Sound of Metal provides plenty of food for thought, too. In his life before hearing loss, Ruben is the drummer in a two-person band (which my friend assures me is punk, though some call it metal). Some of the last sounds that he hears are his own music. Then he tries an experimental surgery designed to restore some hearing, but his new made-made implants don’t work with the nuance and fullness of his organic ears. The title may also be alluding to The Sound of Music since it’s pretty easy to make comparisons between Ruben and the fictionalized Maria of the musical.
Why It Shouldn’t Win:
Candidly, I myself wouldn’t have chosen Sound of Metal if given the opportunity to hand pick the Best Picture nominees. It’s not that I hate the film. It’s worthy of the nomination, but others that did not get in are also worthy of nominations, and I would have chosen them over this one. A few I liked better? Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Night in Miami, Da 5 Bloods, maybe even News of the World.
One innovative aspect of the movie is that it often lets the audience hear what Ruben hears, helping us to understand just how dramatically this sudden change affects his life. I, personally, found these scenes difficult to watch because for the past few years I’ve experienced tinnitus which I try to ignore (to minimize the ringing). For me, hearing what Ruben hears makes the movie emotionally taxing and psychologically exhausting to experience.
I also kept feeling intense resentment on Ruben’s behalf. Imagine if you were trying to solve a life problem, and your only source of help was someone who behaved like an oracle or prophet. Maybe sometimes you’re not looking for inner peace. Maybe you just want to find the cheapest flight to Chicago or locate a spare part for your broken-down car. We could probably all live our lives with more peace and greater profundity, but we’re allowed to muddle through having our little adventures like everyone else, aren’t we? Ruben doesn’t want to accept being deaf and live in a community for the deaf. He wants to continue being a musician and tour the country playing drums for the woman he loves (who, incidentally, is not allowed to live in Joe’s community with him). I don’t like the way he’s treated as a criminal or an irresponsible child simply because he’s developed a health problem. We all get one life. Isn’t he allowed to live his own life? Presumably Joe got to live his life and make his own mistakes. Ruben is deeply in love with Lou. Why is he not allowed to do everything within his power to make that relationship work out? I mean, I’ll grant you that part of the issue is that she feels differently than he does, and he’s not accepting reality. But he’s not able to learn as much about that situation as he could because he’s supposed to be cut off from everybody, living in an isolated community. The situation frustrates me. Ruben went deaf. He didn’t commit a crime. He didn’t even start using drugs.
Sound of Metal hugely resonated with some people. It has fans that love it intensely. But I don’t think its appeal is broad enough for a Best Picture winner (in just the same way that my favorite film of the year, Promising Young Woman lacks that broad appeal). Sound of Metal is an excellent film, both powerful and personal. The story touches on universal themes, yet it’s grounded in the specifics of fascinating niche community. But other films represent 2020 a bit better.
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Nominated Producers: Marc Platt and Stuart Besser
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Writers: Aaron Sorkin
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Kelvin Harrison Jr., John Carroll Lynch, Ben Shenkman, J.C. MacKenzie, John Doman, Alex Sharp, Caitlin FitzGerald, Alice Kremelberg, Michael Keaton, and others.
Plot: In the summer of 1968, multiple activist groups plan to come to Chicago to protest near the site of the Democratic Party Convention. Somehow, this results in an event of violence and bloodshed. Months later, Richard Nixon takes office, and his administration plans to prosecute eight of the organizers of these events, charging them with conspiracy to riot. A highly publicized trial begins. Seven of the accused (including Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin) are defended by William Kunstler who immediately argues that most of them had never met one another before the trial. The eighth man, Bobby Seale, protests again and again that 1) He has absolutely nothing to do with the other seven defendants, nor the riot in question, and 2) He is appearing without counsel against his wishes. Time and again, Judge Julius Hoffman expresses obvious disdain for all the defendants, and particularly for Seale who is black and in communication with Black Panther Party leader Chairman Fred Hampton. As the event drags on and on, Judge Hoffman presides in ludicrous, baffling, and often enraging fashion over what defendant Abbie Hoffman keeps reminding everyone is “a political trial.” But what is a political trial?
Why It Should Win:
In my mind, The Trial of the Chicago 7 should win Best Picture. It’s not my favorite film of the year (not even close), but it speaks to the zeitgeist of 2020, while simultaneously giving us a useful history lesson and using the sharp writing of Aaron Sorkin to showcase the talents of quite a powerful acting ensemble. It’s no surprise that this film won the SAG award for Best Ensemble Cast. The cast is impressive, so many huge names, all known as heavy-hitting actors. (I’ll confess, part of me wants this to win just because Michael Keaton is in it. Since his career resurgence in the mid-2010s, he’s already starred in two Best Picture winners. Watching that list continue to grow would give me great pleasure.)
Sacha Baron Cohen gives the most memorable performance of the film in his Best Supporting Oscar nominated turn as Abbie Hoffman. Together with Jeremy Strong’s likeable Jerry Rubin, Hoffman quickly emerges as the character who understands how to make the audience listen to him (both then and now) and has something coherent and focused to say. Mark Rylance is also excellent playing the less flashy character, defense attorney William Kunstler, and Frank Langella makes the audience feel the frustration of the defendants as they interact with the baffling Judge Hoffman. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II helps us see how unfair the system could be to black Americans like Bobby Seale. When I first watched the film, I imagined the distant possibility of Oscar nominations for Abdul-Mateen and the talented Kelvin Harrison Jr. who plays Chairman Fred Hampton. Then I saw Daniel Kaluuya play Hampton in an even more impressive way in Judas and the Black Messiah. But Sorkin and Harrison still deserve credit for teaching me everything I knew about Hampton up to that point. Great actors deliver incomparably written lines, and that makes the movie a joy to watch.
Known for his fantastic writing, Sorkin also directs this film well (despite his failure to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Director). What he does here strikes me as a big improvement over Molly’s Game, the last film I saw him direct. I liked Molly’s Game a lot, but the dialogue was so polished that sometimes the story felt too artificial. The Trial of the Chicago 7, on the other hand, plays like any other Hollywood movie. The story moves along at a brisk, consistent pace, and without becoming bogged down or muddled, it manages to juggle quite a number of significant characters and work in a staggering amount of historical information that doubles as commentary on the present day.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 manages the impressive trick of giving us new information about an event in our nation’s past at the same time as it comments on pressing concerns facing our society right now. When I showed the movie to my father, he commented that although he’d watched the coverage of the trial on TV as a young man, the film gave him new understanding of the event. Even if you’re not old enough to remember political events early in the Nixon administration, you probably remember all of the rioting that happened last summer. If watched thoughtfully, the film can provide some insight and clarity about 2020, too.
Why It Shouldn’t Win:
Aaron Sorkin didn’t get nominated for Best Director. Now it’s true, Ben Affleck was snubbed for Best Director, too, and then Argo won Best Picture. And it’s also true that only the Directors Branch votes on Best Director nominees, whereas everyone in the Academy voters on winners. Still, it’s worth mentioning. Aaron Sorkin didn’t get nominated for Best Director. Also, Sorkin hasn’t been picking up that many prizes for Best Original Screenplay. (More recently, he’s been losing out to Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell.)
And I’ve got to say, I found Eddie Redmayne’s lead performance as Tom Hayden disappointingly underwhelming. Redmayne is such an excellent actor. Usually, he tackles characters who are more challenging and look exciting when he brings them to life on screen. By comparison to some of Redmayne’s other superbly acted characters, Hayden just seems vague and boring. I mean no disrespect to the historical Hayden, and I’m also not knocking Redmayne’s skills. It’s not a bad performance. He’s not doing anything wrong. But promotional material for the movie (and just the fact that Redmayne is presented as the star of the film) led me to believe that his performance would be explosive and mind-blowing. And it’s not. Perhaps Sorkin did this deliberately to lure audiences with Redmayne’s Hayden and use his lackluster appeal to shine more of a light on Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, and Chairman Fred Hampton. To be fair to the film, Redmayne’s underwhelming turn as Hayden does emphasize the specialness of Sacha Baron Cohen’s work as Abbie Hoffman. I’ll admit, too, that on a second viewing Redmayne’s performance seems less disappointing. Watching with adjusted expectations, I can appreciate his work for what it is without becoming irritated by what it is not.
Another potential strike against the movie—where are the women? Bernadine answers the phones. Daphne O’Conner “ensorcells” Jerry Rubin. Seale and Dellinger have concerned significant others. One of the jurors reads James Baldwin. Somebody at the protest gets harassed and attacked. Collectively, these women have fewer lines than Baron Cohen’s Hoffman says per minute. I can appreciate that Sorkin tried to include women in a story that already involves eight male defendants, their male prosecutors and defenders, the male judge, the male government officials. There’s not exactly room in the story to fret over passing the Bechdel test. Now, as a woman, I’ll say that I don’t mind the fact that this story predominantly features male characters. But I’m just one woman. I can’t promise that there aren’t women out there who find the lack of female characters grating. (Plus, the female character with the biggest part is the treacherous one who “ensorcells” people.) Some of these troubled people may be voting Academy members.
Honestly, if Nomadland doesn’t win Best Picture, The Trial of the Chicago 7 probably will. I personally think Chicago 7 might be a more slightly more accessible winner, more likely to resonate with the broader audience. If I got to choose, I’d prefer Minari or (my favorite) Promising Young Woman. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Every nominated film this year is pretty solid. No matter what, the Best Picture winner of 2021 will be a film of quality.