The Nomadland director’s authorship is obvious in this 2015 story of Lakota siblings adjusting to the death of their father
In honour of Nomadland, the film from director Chloé Zhao that is set to dominate as the connoisseur-choice of this year’s awards season, here is a belated launch of her lovely feature debut from 2015, which never actually had a full release in the
UK. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see it: some derivative, Malickian touches, yes, but like her other films, it’s a deeply intelligent and sympathetic rendering of real-life situations, using nonprofessionals playing approximations of themselves.
The setting is the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota (the site of Wounded Knee creek, where the 1890 massacre of Lakota people took place); John Reddy and Jashaun St John play Johnny and Jashaun, a teen Lakota boy and his kid sister, whose lives are turned upside down when their absentee dad, a bronco rider, dies drunkenly in a
fire. Johnny and Jashaun meet all their various half-siblings at the funeral. As Johnny says to his brother Cody (Justin Reddy), now in prison: “It’s as if he’s suddenly back in our lives, now that he’s gone … ain’t that funny?”