In almost no way does Chloé Zhao‘s quiet, enormous, deep breath of a movie, “Nomadland,” resemble “Blade Runner.” Except there’s this one moment: an outstanding speech in a film as attuned to vast wild silences as to conversation. Fern (Frances McDormand) is talking to her friend and fellow nomad Swankie (played, like many of the other roles by the real person on whom she is based). In a calm, accidental-seeming close-up, Swankie delivers a brimming monologue reminiscent of Rutger Hauer’s famous closing speech, but instead of C-beams glittering near the Tannhauser Gate, it’s a family of moose in Idaho and a cliff speckled with swallows nests, whose whirling occupants are reflected in the lake beneath her canoe, suspending her in the middle of the flock. And instead of sorrowful rage that these tears in rain will at some point be lost forever, Swankie recites her litany with awe and gratitude: It is a thanksgiving. To regard all the things you’ve seen and felt and thought as worth the high cost of experiencing them is the gentle nudge of “Nomadland” – a wise, beautiful film summoned up entirely from things authentically seen, felt, and thought.

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