Another forgotten Oscar Winner

It won for virtue signaling purposes.

ok, boomer

Yup, even more recently movies like The Departed and No Country For Old Men will be remembered forever, but nobody even remembers movies like The Artist, Shape of Water, Green Book, Parasite, Spotlight, and especially this.

It's too soon to say if this film will be remembered or not. I think Nomadland is a masterpiece and I believe it very well could be remembered and appreciated years from now, but we can't know for sure yet.

i think the oscars suffer from an identity crisis. there's a place for anything. for foreign/indie flicks such as 'parasite' or 'nomadland' there's already cannes or sundace, for example. the academy awards should be about big hollywood movies. cobbler, stick to your trade!

I've said I don't think it really deserved an Oscar, but it was a very unique and interesting movie. A very personal look at ... a person who I am not sure could exist. They did not fill out Fern's character very well, or detail her situation, which would have been key to really getting inside her head.

But, on the other hand, there were so many other terrible or just average movies, I think it was nice that a movie like this got the AA.

I did not watch the AA, and I have not for such a long time. I think since before 2000. I was just working too hard and by that time movies were really not that interesting to me. When movies like Pirates of the Caribbean win an Oscar, to me it is like they had no meaning. I used to like looking at the YouTube clips of whatever comedian was hosting the shows, but even that is wearing thing, because no one does or says anything that is real or interesting any more ... i.e. authentic.

It is viciously ironic that the last time authentic was the word used a lot in the public space was in regard to Donald Trump ... which I guess shows how clueless we are to apply the word.

Not sure why a movie which played more like a documentary than a feature film. This film even failed to go into explicit detail on the root causes of the increase in van dwellers across the United States, besides making no-brainer generalizations such as how a social security check is insufficient to pay rent, which does a disservice to all the nomads and future nomads out there. It was predominantly a talking heads movie with not much to offer in terms of masterful use of visual storytelling devices and artistic expression--something I previously thought Best Picture Oscar winning films were made of.

Besides this film winning Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress Oscars, it also received Academy Awards noms for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography. Had this film not been showered with some of the highest accolades in the industry, I would not be anywhere as harsh as I'm about to be.

That being said, I'm baffled as to why the Academy is awarding filmmaking that ain't Oscar bait, isn't visionary, not revelatory, nor groundbreaking by any stretch but is instead nominating films which are unambitious, don't go out on a limb and appear to be playing it safe in order not to offend anyone (i.e., Amazon, Wall Street bankers who engineered the Great Recession, billionaire tax evaders, draconian legislative and law enforcement tactics against the homeless, proponents of corporate capitalism/economic inequality), which translates to bland and boring.

While McDormand is one of the best actresses working in Hollywood today, her past performances alone should not justify her resting on her laurels and winning a Best Actress Oscar for portraying a fictional character who exhibited no character arc--her character starts off and ends the movie as basically the same character--a one-note performance and not layered by any stretch. No heroes' journey here--the story begins, goes nowhere and abruptly ends--about the only journey in this film involved driving around in her van from one dead end job to the next while meeting up with her support group comprised of other van dwellers.

My idea of a role with a considerable character arc was Carey Mulligan's performance in Promising Young Woman, which was in my opinion the best actress performance of 2020 bar none in large part because of the tremendous range she exhibited in this film. Mulligan should have won the Best Actress Oscar. Viola Davis was likewise snubbed by the Academy for her mesmerizing performance in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

I'm curious as to who taught Chole Zhao how to write a feature film screenplay as she appears to have forsaken proven script structure and broken every screenwriting rule in the book by not including several of the ingredients that great films have in common--thus the reason this film came off to me as more akin to a documentary than a full length feature film. Obviously, Academy Awards voters don't seem to care about lowering the bar.

One of the first rules of screenwriting is to show not tell by incorporating creative use of exposition and conveying visual storytelling devices. However, what this film predominantly seemed to do was tell not show--as in dialogue driven talking heads with little to show for. If this film was based on an original screenplay that would be one thing, but because it was adapted for the screen, one would expect the screenwriter to make an effort to let the characters reveal their emotions and thoughts through actions and images instead of via mostly dialogue, which is the lazy way of crafting an adapted script.

This story had no real tension and conflict to drive the storyline forward, no plot--thus it's not plot-driven and had no meaningful plot twists, no mesmerizing opening scene to grab my attention, no formidable antagonist who challenged the mettle, resolve and intestinal fortitude of the protagonist (the only example I could think of was a concerned woman knocking on the side of Fern's van and kindly questioning her reason for parking the van on her private property), it was very slow paced and did not build up to a satisfying climax, no believable chemistry/camaraderie between any of the characters, no real purpose for the main character other than to find seasonal employment (even here they could have shown how companies such as Amazon exploited essential workers during the pandemic) and form superficial relationships with other nomads, bland backstory, no emotional changes executed throughout the film, none of the major characters transformed their lives in any noticeable way, no fleshing out of the characters, making them layered--thus it's not character-driven, no genuine moral premise, no witty dialogue, no do-or-die, all-is-lost point in the film where the stakes are raised forcing the main character to make extremely difficult choices, nothing I would constitute as visual art--okay I'll admit the cinematography was a sight to behold when examined in it's entirely but nothing really stood out visually that would be forever burned in my cerebral cortex, nothing original which I haven't seen done better in previous films, and no true portrayal of human poverty and suffering, they could have at least capitalized on her vulnerability to make us care about her plight, a woman-against-the-world archetype to root for and sympathize with, which should have been the underlying theme of this film.

Can anyone explain why this film was even nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, least to say, winning Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director?