Nomadland is an unassuming period piece. Its key events take place roughly a decade prior to its release date. You wouldn’t know that, though, beyond a few stray mentions of certain dates and the presence of a few old cell phones. The film centers on the voyages of its titular nomads, who seem removed in time and space from the rest of the world. They get by on parking lot largesse, desert campgrounds, and the other wide spots in the countryside. And the places they inhabit feel weathered and distant enough to seem both ancient and timeless.
And yet, it’s hard to imagine a film more salient for the present moment. Palpable in the very premise of Nomadland is a sense of the things left behind by a society without enough care for the least of us. The parade of precious possessions, pets, and even people cast aside, because there’s no one there to look after them anymore, runs throughout the film. It is, in its way, a blistering indictment of any community that would prompt its citizens to resort to such desperate (if resourceful) measures, for want of other options.
But Nomadland is also a movie about loss and the way that our connections to the people closest to us create roots deeper than any given place, even the ones with the allure of warm beds and hot food. When those roots are torn up — by illness or death or a changing economic landscape — it may be hard, if not impossible, to ever lay them down again. The film delves into both the practical reasons for adopting this lifestyle, but also the psychology of it: the sense of vital bonds severed that lead to a certain rootlessness, even in those fortunate enough to have the option to settle down elsewhere.
The embodiment of that state-of-mind is Fern, a widow from a Nevada mining town that withered on the vine when demand for sheetrock dried up. The film follows her travelogue over the course of a year and beyond, as she roams the countryside, resting wherever there’s work or community enough to sustain her. We see the world through the window of her packed-in van, which doubles as both transportation and shelter, as she makes friends, works odd jobs, and scrapes by on a combination of hard work and the kindness of strangers.
The first Oscar-winning film to be based on Chris Farley's "Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker" sketch.
Writer/director/editor Chloé Zhao lends this journey the air of naturalism it deserves. There are no big speeches to be found here and little in the way of a traditional plot or structure. Instead, the movie laudably takes on the spirit of its protagonist, full of salt-of-the-earth wandering and the buoying yet complicated tangles of human interaction. It’s a film that ambles, and sometimes stutters, but always moves in tune with the atmosphere Zhao and her team create and Fern’s inner life.
It seems bold to say for an actor as rightfully decorated as Frances McDormand, but this performance may be her magnum opus. Fern is not a character who tells people what she really thinks or feels, almost to a fault. But in the tiniest expressions on McDormand’s face, the shifts in body language or sense of palpable discomfort when something seems too close or just close enough, she communicates those sensations and sentiments as clear as a bell.
That thoroughly lived-in performance matches beautifully with Nomadland’s stunning cinematography. Director of Photography Joshua James Richards shoots astounding vistas from across the American landscape, finding beauty in desolate old towns, desert flora and fauna, and faces lit by fires crackling from the ground and piercing the night sky. The sense of loneliness blended with human connection, of undeniable smallness within a vast natural world, comes through in the wonderful collection of images Zhao and Richards present one after the other.
This aesthetic matches the soothing-yet-melancholy piano-based score that adds emotion to the movie’s empty spaces. There’s something deceptively propulsive about Nomadland in its way, suffused with those melodies. The film sinks into Fern’s endless search for the next odd job, the next temporary solution to her problems, the next friendly face who offers solace amid the ceaseless wandering. But Zhao also isn’t afraid to pause and show Fern simply living or to focus on the smaller moments within her experiences that make the character and her journey seem so viscerally real.
Fern out looking for an honest man.
Fern’s plight comes through in the tough choices she makes in the first half of the film, and the fellow travelers she connects with grappling with the same dilemmas. During her sojourn, the audience hears stories of sickness, grief, and other ways of falling through the social safety net that all but force people to learn how to live out of their vehicles in faraway places. No one ever articulates this, short of the nomads’ resident philosopher, but there’s the sense of these individuals having been victimized by a system that no longer has use for them, wanting to disengage and start anew somewhere they’re no longer bound by it.
Caution: the remainder of this review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the plot of Nomadland.
This results in an inherent transience, but also deeper, liberating ties to the natural world in spare moments of grace and beauty. People flit in and out of Fern’s life — Swankie, Linda May, Dave — each leaving an impression but finding ways to move on as time and necessity demand. The joy and renewed loss of these fleeting but no less meaningful bonds animates the film, as we see small bits of stability and community infused into Fern’s life before they’re drained away by her road-bound existence.
And yet, even there, Fern enjoys a certain peace away from the hustle and bustle of a more traditional existence, one we eventually learn she eschews by choice. That’s the striking turn in the second half of Nomadland. We eventually learn that Fern is not wholly a traveler by necessity, with opportunities to settle down with new friends and old family. But her eccentricity, and her courage, leave her more comfortable drifting from place to place rather than putting down stakes once more.
In this scene, nomads watching a pirated feed of cat videos from YouTube.
Ultimately, the film ties that choice to the loss of her husband and, eventually, the loss of the town where they made their home. It’s an irrevocable sort of grief, one that keeps Fern at a certain distance even from those who would welcome her, for fear that laying down roots again would be a betrayal of his memory. She’s afraid it would wipe away what her husband meant to her, blunt the life they built together, if she were ever to replace it with anything half as sweet or stable. By the end, Fern seems to find some peace in this idea too, and the sense that this raft of kind souls she’s lost and found and lost again will be met again a little on down the road. It keeps her moving despite the pain of unfixable loss.
There is something painfully timely about that tack. Nomadland does not shy away from the economic circumstances and slanted playing fields that leave so many struggling amid the ever-shifting terrain of subsistence and prosperity. At the same time, the film leans into a common loneliness founded on deep loss, balanced only by the warmth of the dribs and drabs of human connection that fade in and out of one’s life. The combination of the two creates a mood and a message that are, like Fern herself, made for all seasons.
