“Nomadland” is astounding. At its epicentre is an utterly transfixing and emotionally captivating performance from the legendary Frances McDormand. Chloe Zhao (“The Rider”), adapting the screenplay from Jessica Bruder’s novel, directs this desolate impression of American life; an abandoned diorama of the lives working people.
In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, as the U.S mortgage bubble burst, sending the international economy into turmoil, small towns across America fell victim to a cascading plague of bankruptcy. The ramifications of this greed have collateral damage in the form of the people that populate this movie.
Nest eggs were crushed, and a small segment of the ageing population most affected saw a pathway for survival in an itinerant life. In modestly ‘pimped out’ vans and trucks, carrying only their most essential and cherished possessions these wanderers make friends, pick up seasonal work; stable retirement exchanged for drifting through the expansive North American continent.
In Australia, we’d call this group ‘Grey Nomads,’ “empty-nesters” making the most of modest retirement funds by making their lives a permanent overland safari.
Frances McDormand is Fern, our entry-point into this world. Fern is a character of incredible defiance, one in quieter moments admits to not “playing well” with others. Fern’s husband has passed away, and their home town abandoned in the wake of a plant closure.
She’s ripe for the kind of circumspection and detachment that can lead to not wanting to be a part of this world, in a much more permanent way than choosing “van” life. In one moment of the film, she detaches from a tour group, led by one of the rare professional actors in the bunch David Strathairn playing Dave.
While the rest of the group are cautiously approaching this naturally formed rock maze, Fern hurries through, twisting and turning, quickly losing her way. There’s a moment that her reflexive instincts to be alone lead her to that reality, in the wilderness, fortunately, a watchful Dave with the high ground hears her scream and directs her home.
For her entire career, McDormand animates and embodies characters that don’t seem to reflect who she is. What’s most disarming about “Nomadland” is how the gimmick of making overt choices as Fern doesn’t cheapen the embrace of the community that she’s dignifying in every frame.
Zhao surrounds McDormand’s Fern with an incredible array of non-actors; people who live these “houseless not homeless” lives. This sparse time-lapse of their experience doesn’t direct you like a GPS app, and Zhao wants you to see and feel what it’s like to adopt this life.
It’s a calling for some, and for others, the circumstances of their town/family/job are the stick threatening them with no choices for survival. We see the “warts and all” experience of road life; the bitter cold, the threat of a breakdown, the battle between thrift and sustenance and the humanity of a stomach upset.
Zhao’s camera tracks Fern’s (McDormand) wandering through each new campsite and each new job. Like those hypnotic laundromat washers, McDormand has a centrifugal force that draws your eyes to her in every frame.
Frequently the camera tilts, lifts, and exalts this experience and McDormand repeatedly shrinks; finding every impulse and action to be noticed. It’s precisely that tension that made for such hypnotic viewing. Zhao wants to highlight the friction of those memorable human moments in the seemingly meaningless.
Zhao shows that there’s salvation in the trivial. Every moment feels like we’re elevating those small signs of life to opera. Zhao utilises the deft and beautiful piano arrangements of Ludovico Einaudi to provide the bedrock of the film and to advance Fern’s naked harmony with stunning natural landscapes.
“Nomadland” finds the divine beauty of connections and community in a world that exalts callous individuality. Watching Fern (McDormand) harmonise with non-actors like Patricia Grier, Linda May, Angela Reyes, Carl R. Hughes, Douglas G. Soul, Ryan Aquino, Teresa Buchanan makes McDormand’s performance, and Zhao’s direction all the more impressive.
In the final moments of “Nomadland,” Zhao and McDormand play revisionist with a defining moment in American cinema (that I will not spoil). Rather than feeling glib, it suddenly makes the poetic curtain closure on “Nomadland” exponentially more powerful.
This entire film is an epilogue, a eulogy, a regression to a frontier existence. In these final moments, Fern’s defiance is electric and harrowing. When these folk depart, they don’t say goodbye; they say “see you down the road.” After Chloe Zhao makes this lucrative Marvel movie detour, I’ll have a ticket for any other film that she’s behind; down the road.
