Chloé Zhao must be a remarkable person to achieve what she’s achieved. Ten years ago, it would have been inconceivable for a Chinese woman to take out Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, for a film in which hardly anything happens. That film was Nomadland (2020), in which Frances McDormand played a woman who had given up a permanent home and made her life in a camper van. It was a vision of freedom snatched from the staggering poverty and inequality that has consumed America’s working classes.
Nomadland came along at the right time to appeal to a politicised Academy still reeling from the depredations of the first Trump Presidency. It had a singularity of purpose that made the other nominations seem frivolous.
Nomadland was Zhao’s third film, her two previous efforts having barely left a trace at the box office. She followed up with The Eternals (2021), a big budget Marvel Comics Universe production that I haven’t seen, and can barely imagine. By the usual MCU standards it failed with the fans, earning a mere US$402 million.
Hamnet, Zhao’s fifth feature, finds her back in the limelight. It was judged Best Motion Picture – Drama, at this year’s Golden Globes, and is in the running for another Oscar or two. Set in the Elizabethan era, it’s a tale of William Shakespeare and his family, told with an unusual degree of intimacy. True to form, it’s also a slow-moving exercise that builds to a shuddering intensity, although the journey takes almost two hours.