With the release of Academy Award nominations and Golden Globe awards, such pomp may seem out of place this year. But the film awards circuit has brought to the spotlight two rural films that have achieved many firsts in the film industry and are bringing to households the rural United States as never before seen: Minari and Nomadland.
Minari is set in the Arkansas Ozarks during the 1980s and follows a Korean-American family as they pursue the American dream in a rural community. Director Lee Isaac Chung borrowed from his own childhood growing up on a farm in Lincoln, Arkansas. Filmed in Oklahoma during a hot summer, Chung directed much of the filming inside a double wide trailer, a home based on the one he dreamed of living in during his youth. Oklahoma hopes that the film’s success will bolster the state’s film industry, creating more jobs in the rural state.
Having won numerous Sundance Film Festival awards and six Oscar nominations, Minari’s receipt of the Golden Globe award for best foreign language film, rather than best drama, caused backlash. Although more than fifty-percent of the film’s dialogue is in Korean, Minari tells a quintessential American story of immigration, obstacles, and success. In creating his film, Chung expressed, “My friends back in Arkansas are the audience I wanted to connect with.”
Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-jung, both lead actors in the film, along with producer Christina Oh made history in the awards circuits: Yeun is the first Asian-American to be nominated for best actor in a leading role, Youn is the first Korean actress to receive the Screen Actors Guild award for best female actor, and Oh is the first Asian-American to be nominated for best picture. It is troubling that such firsts are being made in 2021, and backlash over the lack of diversity in film awards ceremonies is well documented and deserved: “Since 1929, only 6.2 percent of minority actors and directors have gotten [nomination] nods.”
Nomadland, Minari’s fellow critical darling, is a film by director Chloé Zhao that follows a woman who leaves her remote, diminishing Nevada town to live out of her van as she traverses the American West. The movie highlights some stark realities of rurality in the United States, with remote towns across the country dwindling as residents leave and businesses close, discussed on Legal Ruralism here and here.
Filmed throughout South Dakota, Nomadland captures small-towns and rural expanses in the state, including Wall, where the infamous Wall Drug is located, and Scenic, whose current ownership is discussed in a blog post here. The state’s tourism sector is hopeful the success of the film will bring increased tourism to the filming locations:
Movies have a tendency to inspire people and to really motivate them to travel to different places and… with the theme of the movie being outdoors and wide open spaces, I think it will really entice people to want to come out and to experience the Black Hills and Badlands area.
Director Zhao’s career illustrates a palpable love for the rural American West and specifically South Dakota, with all three of her feature films set in and filmed there. Her first film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, follows a teenager and his family living in the Oglala Lakota Nation and Zhao engaged primarily local, non-actor residents for the film leads.
As a Chinese national who grew up in Beijing, Zhao found joy in the rural geography featured in Nomadland:
As a Chinese national who grew up in Beijing, Zhao found joy in the rural geography featured in Nomadland:
As I fell in love with the American West, it was impossible not to become fascinated with the roads that lead to the many adventures beyond the horizon.
Zhao is the first woman of color to receive an Oscar nomination for best director.
These recent rural films add nuanced narratives of what it means to be rural in America. As Minari’s producer shared with the Daily Yonder,
These recent rural films add nuanced narratives of what it means to be rural in America. As Minari’s producer shared with the Daily Yonder,
We wanted to make sure that everyone was, even in these rural areas, portrayed as people. Because we all are human beings after all. And we all come from different backgrounds and there’s no right way to human.
2 comments:
Very insightful, Melissa. So far, I have only seen Nomadland, but I am waiting for Minari to come out on streaming services (for free). I felt like Nomadland captured modern life better than some other similar stories in the genre, like the Wild with Reese Witherspoon from 2016 or Wild with Robin Wright from this year (I'm guessing). Something I thought that rang true of Nomadland's take on wanderers escaping into the heartland is that she mainly lives in the streets. Parking lots, to be exact, probably are the main setting of the movie. It reminded me of how people who lost their homes to fires in the recent years in California ended up living in Walmart parking lots. Communities were formed there and in Nomadland. That is differs from other similar stories where the protagonists seek isolation. After all, humans are social animals and even when isolating themselves, the focus of the protagonists stays on their relationships. Nomadland did well to show a protagonists who carries that burden and doesn't forsake building relationships along the way.
Appreciate your analysis, Melissa, of the rural components of these Oscar-nominated films. Like Tommy, I've only seen Nomadland so far. One part of the Nomadland story that stuck with me was the protagonist's periodic work in an Amazon fulfillment center, which employed workers based on seasonal demand. I've been thinking about this film in the context of the unionization efforts in Bessemer, AL and Taylor's earlier blog post on this topic. Additionally, I especially appreciated the film's portrayal of moments of authentic joy and beauty while fully depicting rural hardships.
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