I just watched the trailer, and even the damned trailer made me weepy.
The cynical me says it is a stab for Academy Awards. The sentimental me says I don’t care.
Oh they have that white haired guy. I’ve seen him on his YouTube channel.
I feel like there’s something existentially terrifying to certain people about that living in vans lifestyle - those question like, what do i do, where do I go, who do i know? To the kinds of people who make movies it’s probably the furthest from their expectations of a good life. It’s also kind of clear that the romance of it pretty quickly disintegrates into cold camping in lonely, unfurnished places - all those shots about driving into snowing nothings. You can imagine it’s a lifestyle with much time and little to do, something it directly references (the all you have are memories monologue). You can see the film is trying to shoehorn a Great American Narrative about homelessness in there, but then it kind of pulls back and goes a different direction by the end of the trailer. There’s nothing certain high culture types loves more than finding Real Americans living alternative lifestyles they themselves would trade anything not to live.
In brief, it looks like basically someone was watching a lot of “How to live in a van” YouTube videos and decided to make a MUBI film out of it.
I thought maybe this was some acronym I’ve never heard before (Made Up By Ignoramuses?), but I guess it’s yet another streaming service? Founded in 2007?
I mean i’m kind of a MUBI guy ^^, that’s just about all the kinds of films i can stand to watch. But there’s certainly a type. It’s actually not-so-subtle vehicle for European filmmaking and filmmakers: it claims to be “co-founded by the European Union, Creative Europe Media”, though how much this is true or an exaggeration of involvement is hard to say.
I cannot wait to see this on Boxing Day. The Rider’s remains one of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen. Chloe Zhao must be a remarkable woman. Not only is she an incredibly gifted filmmaker, but the fact she managed to get local, non-professional actors from a community outside of her culture to wholly trust her and play such natural versions of themselves is mind boggling.
Looks great. I love Frances McDormand.
This doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere. How is anyone getting to watch this?
This is streaming on Hulu and I subscribed for a free month in order to watch it. Saw it last night.
It’s a contemplative movie that I thought deals well with the rootlessness of Americans. It almost has the feel of a documentary, considering that there are only perhaps four or five actors in it, and the rest of the people are truly nomads and are playing themselves. It’s certainly a slice of life I’ve never seen before. Frances McDormand is great of course.
My wife was surprised Amazon would let a movie really show what their warehouses are like. It’s not an expose or anything like that, but those jobs sure look to be soul crushing.
Beautiful movie. Chloe is an amazing filmmaker who blurs the line between fiction and documentary so artfully.
It takes a rare talent to research this part of America to learn about it and meet non-actors who can carry sizable supporting roles. You don’t write this screenplay so much as go out into the world to find it. She and Debra Granik work on a similar wavelength. (NYU TISCH, BABY! We do good work.) I can’t wait to watch it again.
And, yeah, it does for Amazon warehouses what meat industry docs do when they show you the conditions inside the slaughterhouse. Amazing to see what my convenience looks like on the invisible end of the transaction. It’s inhuman. The saddest part about it is that I still won’t quit one-click ordering just like I won’t quit bacon.
I’m happy to say this rather cynical take is way off base, at least as far as I’m concerned. It really isn’t about the romance of it. And it really isn’t about homelessness. It’s about a lot of things, though- grief, loneliness and loss- loss of dreams, loved ones, faith in the system. A friend of mine said the other day on FB that there’s not an inauthentic moment in the entire movie, and I agree with that. I’ll probably watch it again in a few weeks.
I looked it up, and apparently the filmmaker has directed a few similar indie movies that blur the line between fiction and real-world stories, using real people as themselves intersecting with a fictional narrative. And she finished directing Marvel’s The Eternals, which, WTF? I’ve been wondering about that , since we have practically no information or trailers, even though its original release date was last November, and now I’m even more curious.
Man, that really gets to the heart of what she’s doing here. I don’t know how she does manages to immerse herself so believably into these communities but it never feels contrived or patronizing in the way some filmmakers can when examining the lives of regular people. Like Granik, it’s almost as if empathy is embedded into the screen. The way they incorporate non-professional actors alongside Hollywood talents never comes across as jarring which is no small thing.
Agreed. I think Enidigm’s mistake is generalizing about “the kinds of people who make movies.”
Totally. I haven’t read any interviews or anything yet but I suspect Frances McDormand did a lot of work to achieve this feel. She must have lived with those people for a good, long while to become part of that community. Plus they’re already accustomed to folks coming and going the way a film’s cast and crew would.
I mean, this is so great…
My wife and I had a discussion during the movie about whether the “actors” were actually actors. So I went to IMDb and found the same issue.… namely that most of the parts were played by actual nomads.
I’d say that was mostly a success. A little of the dialogue was stilted but not enough to detract from the overall quality of the movie. My wife agrees!
Vulture has a nice profile on Chloe Zhao if anyone’s interested:
That’s a great read! Thanks.
I love her response to the film being called apolitical:
“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.”
Barbara Streisand was the first female director to win the Golden Globes in 1984 for Yentl.
The rumor mill is saying that the movie is more or less finished, but 1) Marvel is holding back on a trailer so they can maybe put “by Oscar Winner Chloe Zhao” in front of it, and 2) Marvel’s so confident in it they’re holding it back for Oscar season at the end of this year. It could turn out to be crap, but I’m super excited to see how it turns out for no other reason than Zhao is directing it.
I bet the rumor mill is over thinking it, I think we can pretty easily attribute the lack of info on The Eternals to COVID-19. Everything since Black Widow missing its original May 2020 release date has been a question mark as that slid first to later and later dates in 2020, and then finally to May 2021 a full year later.
I don’t think they had much interest in shuffling the order of release for the films—or at least not skipping past Black Widow since it’s sort of the last epilogue to the Infinity Saga, so until they can finally release Black Widow, there’s not much point in turning up the marketing machine for the films beyond that.
It’s this more than anything. COVID did a number on every movie plan Disney had.
Just finished watching this. Absolutely loved it. Beautiful. Had me in tears at several points.