In her early 60s, after losing her husband, her job, even the factory town she called home, Frances McDormand’s hardscrabble character hits the road with only a van and the bare necessities. A modern migrant worker, she’s part of a ‘Great Recession’ trend, moving from one temp job to the next (holiday work at Amazon; camp-lot custodian; cafeteria staff; farm harvester) in writer/director/documentarian Chloé Zhao’s followup to her remarkable rodeo-themed THE RIDER/17. Moving a half-step closer to traditional narrative fiction, but keeping a lot of non-pro types in the people McDormand meets in little episodes along the way, most with similar lives on the move for their own reasons; they're downscale versions of those retirees you read about who live on cruise ships, and just as untethered. The nature of editing the stories into neat vignettes giving something of a starry-eyed angle to what must be a very hard life. Too much kindness, too many interesting ‘characters’ to easily swallow. Not that Zhao bypasses difficulties. Yet the real problem, at least in comparison to THE RIDER, is that the more traditional narrative sections: McDormand going to her sister’s for help or meeting/later visiting nice, highly appropriate guy pal (David Strathairn, picking up on her prickly personality), aren’t bridged to take us in and out of the different tones in the material. The more improvisatory feel of real souls met on the road might be from another film and miss the all-of-a-piece, serendipitous wonder of her earlier work. Interesting ideas and superb acting, but basically a bifurcated Road Movie down to the last shot. Less than the sum of its excellent parts.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The more scripted scenes, covering about a third of the running time, might have come out of Paul Mazursky’s senior-citizen-hits-the-road movie HARRY AND TONTO/74, a real time capsule pic, Oscar-winner for Art Carney and holding up surprisingly well. OR: As mentioned above: THE RIDER. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-rider-2017.html
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