No box office success for 'Nomadland'

Frances McDormand and David Strathairn in one of the livelier scenes from Nomadland/Searchlight Pictures

(This is not to knock the people who live and enjoy this lifestyle. This is about the movie.)

To each her own. 

Whatever floats your boat.

Fans your van.

Pandemic or no pandemic, the movie house hosted all of three people on a Saturday night, and there's a reason for that!

Carla, preserve your marriage with Thor and don't dare drag him to see this.

Why pay to sleep when you can do that at home?

This is another one of those flicks made for the critics, much like that awful cat movie by the Coen Brothers, one of whom happens to be married to Frances McDormand, the star and Nomadland co-producer. (I can just see the family sitting around a home bonfire and discussing how they will make their next joyless movie, like Woody Allen's which continue to bomb.)

Talk about a downer. This has got it all. The only thing missing was an attack or some other act of violence coming in the middle of the night which would have pumped up the adrenalin, at least a little.

In-between walks in the desert to contemplate dust, "Fern" urinates, she defecates (and where shall we put it?  There's actually a discussion of this!), and swims naked.  Naturally!  Where would a good art film be without the de rigueur full-frontal female nude?  Where's the male nude?

It would have been difficult to make Ms. McDormand look much worse than she does here, but I'll bet the makeup artist for Nomadland had nomakeland to apply, if one were even one hired for the show. Why bother?

Nomadland  has a few redeeming qualities like the music (by Ludovico Einaudi), the harsh and dry Western scenery (to match the dormant life of the protagonist), and the looks of David Strathairn, the faux S.O., a fantasy who is too nice, too perfect, too considerate to be real. (I mean, come on writers: Show a little life!)

Towards the end when "Fern" walks along a big, rocky coast with leaping, crashing waves jumping up to grab her, all I could wish was that she would just go ahead and jump in so we could escape early.

Like last year wasn't bad enough! Let's pay to see more!

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