Nomadland Review (Film, 2021)

content warning: death by suicide, racial slur (song in night club uses slur for Romani people), grief

Nomadland is a fictional drama adapted from the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder. Writer/director Chloé Zhao adapts the book, about older people adopting nomadic lifestyles in America in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, into a slice of life drama about a year or so in the life of one woman.

In Fern’s own words, she’s “not homeless, just houseless.” In the past few years, she lost her husband, her job, and her home to cancer and the financial crisis. She took what she had left, bought a van, and started living out of it. She travels across the country for whatever work is available. In the winter, she works at an Amazon distributor. In the spring and summer, she works in various campsites in the southwest. Along the way, she makes friends with other nomads, who she pushes away from as the pain of grief is still too fresh in her memory.

Frances McDormand stars as Fern. She’s wonderful in the role. Everything she does feels real. It’s not particularly flashy work, but her presence and honesty speak volumes. She is the core performer in a film filled with non-actors.

Zhao casts some real people featured in the Nomadland book in key supporting roles in the film. It’s a phenomenal choice. Linda May, Fern’s friend from the Amazon job, Swankie, Fern’s neighbor in the desert, and Bob Wells, the man who runs the annual gathering of nomads in Arizona, all play versions of themselves in key roles. They get to share their own stories with McDormand’s Fern stepping in as the audience surrogate to yield the platform to them. It’s Zhao and McDormand’s job to bring out the best in these people, and they succeed.

There’s a meditative structure to Nomadland. The plot is “follow Fern.” There’s more going on, obviously, but so much is left unsaid. Fern is a woman who has always loved the freedom of the outdoors. Now, she escapes to it so she feels free from everything else bothering her. She’s friendly with the other people she meets along the way, but often foregoes any chance to form a more meaningful relationship. She’s not looking for commitment, just companionship, and that can be hard to see.

Nomadland, just from its source material alone, is a critical political text. How did the United States fail so badly that people on the verge of retirement had to restart their lives out of vans and cars? These people Fern encounters are out of normal society because the cost of living is too high. Fern, herself, is a veteran unable to access any services that would allow her to even have the stability of keeping her van near her preferred home. It’s a heartbreaking indictment of the American dream and the ability of the government to protect the financial institutions that could not take care of themselves at the expense of the people who lost everything to them.

Nomadland is streaming on Hulu.

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