If you’ve read more than a couple of my Reckons over the past 12 years, you’ll know that I’m kind of a movie buff: not so much in an academic / analytical way, although I do love that; not compared to many people with encyclopaedic knowledge of Films Noirs from the 1940s, or the filmography of Satyajit Ray or Yasujiro Ozu or Agnes Varda or Bela Tar; but I am ‘above average’ in my watching and geekiness.
I bloody love films and, although I couldn’t have said it as eloquently as the American film critic Roger Ebert, a big part of that is how and what they make me feel. He said
…movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us…
Because of One Thing and Another, none of us have been able to get to cinemas as often as we might like. And while I’ve enjoyed virtually 200 films at home in the past year, the cinema experience is still something special for me. And two of the handful of films I’ve seen there in the last year, both at the great Wotton Electric Picture House, have truly delivered on their ability to create empathy.
Rocks is a terrific portrait of a multi-racial, inner-city group of teenage girls (and one younger brother) that is as real as it gets, full of brilliant individual and ensemble performances. The screening we saw had a BFI Q&A from 2019 where it was clear that the cast were virtually all non-actors recruited from schools and youth clubs, and they all collaborated with the film-makers to develop the story, characters and script.
It’s not an easy watch, and it reminded me of The Florida Project for a near-constant sense of dread I felt at Rocks’ & her brother Emmanuel’s troubles. Yet the ending, and many scenes throughout, felt optimistic, and the film earned that optimism. For all their difficulties, Rocks has friends, and they have her back, no matter what. This could easily have been a film about children abandoned by the system, about a system that cannot cope. That is clearly shown through the story, but that’s not what it’s about. Instead, it revels in the way these young characters get on with their lives, making the best of what they can. supporting each other as best they can, finding and making joy where they can.
Nomadland is one of the more moving experiences I can remember with a film: partly because it was my first cinema visit in more than 6 months, but also because Chloe Zhou has created, written, directed and edited a masterpiece. Like Rocks it’s mostly populated by real people playing versions of themselves, mostly elderly travellers who live in their vehicles, roaming the Great American West for seasonal work and pop-up communities. It would have been easy for Zhou to make a film that rails at the injustice of elderly people forced to live this way by the inadequacies of American Social Security, but she barely touches on that.
Instead, we meet fabulous people like Bob Wells (above), who dispenses unconditional love and comfort to his fellow travellers, all the while living with the grief of the suicide of his young adult son; like Linda May and Charlene Swankie, Derek Endres and Angela Reyes. They all get a chance to tell their story (or a version of it) and noone is judged. Everyone is making the best of a situation, and indeed revelling in the joys it can offer; freedom, friendship, jaw-dropping landscapes, an ability to work and contribute and still feel useful.
Frances McDormand is the lead, and probably the reason the film got made; as the winner of two Oscars already and acting as a producer, it’s obvious how much she has invested in the film, in every possible way. And we should be grateful for that; it becomes almost hard to tell or remember if she’s actually living as a nomad, or if Fern is a real nomad who just happens be a near-double for Frances McDormand.
For a film with such massive vistas it’s deeply intimate and human, with barely a raised voice through the film, which in its way forces you to lean in, to pay attention and really listen. And when you do, it’s so deeply rewarding.
Both films feature real people doing their best every day. These are lives well-lived, however different they might be from mine. I have no right to judge or pity or even envy. My privilege is to watch, listen and understand, with empathy and gratitude.
What I Reckon 