Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Director: Chloé Zhao
Quick Impressions:
What a beautiful film! I went into Nomadland expecting to like it. After all, it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It’s been called the frontrunner for Best Picture for months. I’ve also heard wonderful things about director Chloé Zhao. (We almost saw The Rider so many times. We knew about it. We talked about it. But, ultimately, we missed it.) I’ve been excited for Nomadland even though, as I realized recently, I had no idea what it was about.
I haven’t read Jessica Bruder’s best-selling book of the same name (though I just ordered it today). I knew nothing about the plot. When my husband asked me what Nomadland was about, I answered, “Um…it’s about Frances McDormand. She’s in it. She’s the star. A lot of people think she could win Best Actress.”
Frankly that was enough to interest me. (I like to watch a movie I plan to review knowing as little as possible about it, anyway.) Frances McDormand is one of my favorite actresses. Some celebrities wow you with their star power or quirky off-screen antics, but in McDormand’s case, I just think she’s an exceptional actress. (I’m not saying she’s not full of personality and charm in real life. I just mean that I love her for her consistently excellent work.) Her turn in Fargo has long been one of my favorite Best Actress performances ever, and when my husband and I first saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, we were just blown away. Nothing else that Oscar season even came close to the way that film wowed us.
Plus, do you realize that if McDormand wins another Oscar this year, she will be tied with Meryl Streep (ahead if you consider that one of Streep’s Oscars is for Supporting Actress) and just one win behind Katharine Hepburn?
Those are the kinds of thoughts I was having when I went in to Nomadland. But the movie quickly swept such trivial nonsense right out of my head.
Forget about awards! Nomadland is a beautiful, soulful piece, so deeply invested in telling a story grounded in realism, in real events, about very particular, real people. (Except for McDormand and David Strathairn, all the characters are non-actors, real people playing only slightly fictive versions of themselves, using their own real names. Many were subjects interviewed in Jessica Bruder’s book.) The film is spiritual, philosophical. It has so much to say and imparts profound meaning even in its silences.
I was in the right sort of mental space to watch Nomadland without even knowing it. Much of the film is a love letter to healing from loss, and lately I’ve been acutely feeling the loss of my mother who died in November. Last week surprised us all by turning traumatic. Having no power with no warning in extremely low temperatures seemed like an inconvenience at first, but after the (fifty-nine hour) ordeal was over, we all felt a bit shaken. Once power was restored and we were able to sleep upstairs again (instead of huddling around clay pots in the living room with sheets covering the stairway), I had a dream that my parents were moving to another state. I had just come to peace with it, reasoning, “Well, now the time we do spend together will be more special. We can take a Disney trip together.” My husband told my mother, “Maybe the next time we meet will be in Fantasyland.” She laughed, and I woke up thinking, “This will be okay. Everything’s okay now.” And then I remembered that my mother is dead. And I was so sad. My dad had a similar experience. After finally relaxing following a strange several days, he felt a rush of powerful grief.
Nomadland is the kind of movie that makes you feel solidarity in loss. After all, loss is an unavoidable part of the human condition. It’s less a bad thing than a thing to be processed over time.
The Good:
When I saw the grim opening lines of the movie, describing how quickly Empire, Nevada, became a virtual ghost town after the gypsum plant closed down, I steeled myself to watch a harrowing dramatization of the stressful life of an impoverished former resident with nowhere else to go. And at first, the movie seemed headed in that direction.
But Nomadland surprised me. Yes, Frances McDormand’s widowed Fern now lives in a van and does temporary, itinerant work, but her lifestyle stems from something more complicated than mere poverty. In fact, she does have someplace else to go. She has other options. She lives in her van by choice. And rather than asking us to pity her plight (or to take action to change it), the movie asks us to consider life from a new point of view, to spend a couple of hours following Fern, trying to understand the purpose of this unconventional life she is carving out for herself.
Fern is not alone in her embrace of this itinerant lifestyle. Early in the film, she joins a community of people embracing similar circumstances when her friend Linda May tells her about a gathering of “nomads” near Quartzsite, Arizona, organized by Bob Wells. This is a real event, and many of the people Fern meets there are interview subjects for Jessica Bruder’s book, including Linda May, Bob Wells, and their friend Swankie, a born survivor. These are just a few of the dozens (maybe hundreds) of real people Fern interacts with during the film. (Apparently, some people in the film didn’t even realize McDormand is an actress!)
So this is an unusual story. Though not a documentary (because Fern’s story is fictional), the movie gives real “nomads” the opportunity to tell their stories in their own words.
And as the movie goes on, we begin to see a couple of things very clearly. 1) More than poverty drives this lifestyle, and 2) There are a number of benefits to the nomad way of life.
I kept thinking of my own family while watching this film. Multiple discussions about getting to retirement age and receiving social security benefits made me think of how my parents were uneasily improvising while waiting for that magic age after my father was laid off just before retirement. (All of that struggle and stress, and now my mother is dead, just one week after turning 68!) I also kept thinking of my husband’s parents who moved into a small camper for years in order to save enough money to buy a piece of land and gradually build themselves a house. I kept crying at random moments during the film. Sometimes I was thinking of our parents’ struggles and triumphs, and sometimes I just felt sad that our society seems so broken. Occasionally, I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason for my upswell of emotion.
One of the most surprising things about Nomadland, though, is its positivity. Bob Wells suggests that the nomad lifestyle is therapeutic, and I can see that. Fern does seasonal jobs all over the country, and her work takes her to some extremely beautiful locations and also to some out of the way places that she might never go otherwise. As I watched, a part of me couldn’t help thinking that some of these (odd) odd jobs looked kind of fun. Certainly this lifestyle looks more vivid, varied, robust, and rewarding than lying in a hospital bed waiting to die. (Of course, life is a constant surprise. Some people go to the hospital, find healing, and live. Sometimes even in a nursing home, people make friends and live a rewarding existence in a happy community.) But the film didn’t spin the nomad’s life as one of tragic adversity in the way that I had expected. At certain moments you think, Yes, these people have had an epiphany, and the way most of us live is actually what’s crazy. I can think of worst things than being retirement age and working in a national park or a small town restaurant. (I’d rather not help with the beet harvest, and Amazon seems pretty boring, too, though this movie does not make working conditions there look as awful as we frequently hear. It seems just fine. As I watched, I wondered if they had received permission to film in an actual Amazon facility. If so, surely they must have agreed not to make it look too horrible.)
The film frequently shows us gorgeous landscapes–the towering grandeur of mountains, the stark beauty of the desert. It makes you want to go West, no question. For me, those Western landscapes are alive with a certain soulfulness anyway. When I was young, we so frequently drove from Texas to California to visit family or go to Disneyland. I always remember my relatives when I drive through the Southwest. Joshua James Richards should be commended for his cinematography. Nomadland perfectly showcases the landscape to create a soulful mood.
Also gorgeous is the haunting score by Ludovico Einaudi, probably my favorite I’ve heard this year. (Though the credits make me uncertain that it counts as a score.)
Frances McDormand, meanwhile, is simply outstanding in an understated role. Not just anyone could play Fern. During production, some people didn’t even realize McDormand was an actress. I don’t think Meryl Streep could get away with something like that. I mean, yes, she’s famous for being a chameleon, but I think she’s too obviously herself to blend into a crowd. (I feel like everyone would say, “Look! It’s Meryl Streep!” Of course, I could be wrong. But every time I see her, although she’s playing a totally different character, Streep still has a spark of energy, a glow, that makes her stand out as something special.) (I probably just didn’t notice Meryl Streep the times she was trying to blend into a crowd.) (She’s probably in my house right now.) (Does this make it sound like I’m saying McDormand isn’t a special person? I hope not!)
At any rate, McDormand gives an excellent performance. She often seems a part of the landscape. She’s haunted, soulful, mysterious. She makes us feel everything that Fern feels so acutely. I’ve seen three performances so far this year that I’d consider worthy of a Best Actress Oscar‐-McDormand, Carey Mulligan, and Viola Davis. I’d be happy to see any of them win. (As far as that goes, Amy Adams is good in Hillbilly Elegy, too, but her work there doesn’t seem as special as some of her past performances.)
The supporting performances here are all delightful, too, because except for David Strathairn (who is very good, as always, as Fern’s friend Dave), no one is an actor. Linda May seems like a hoot, and Swankie certainly makes a strong impression. I also liked the young man who bummed a cigarette. My husband and I thought he looked so familiar and spent several minutes trying to place him, but he isn’t an actor.
Best Scene:
Fern’s talk with Bob near the end of the film is the scene in which so much comes together. What Wells reveals here is so touching, so personal. But Fern’s revelation really resonated with me. I understood exactly what she meant, saw the entire movie in a new light, and started thinking about my own life in a new way.
This scene also sheds light on an earlier moment when Fern recites Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 to a young man who has previously bummed a cigarette from her. Honestly, I inwardly groaned when the poem she wanted to share with him turned out to be Sonnet 18 because I find that one ridiculously overused in movies and TV shows. But then it turned out to be key to unlocking to core of Fern’s story. In fact, that idea was the biggest thing I took away from the movie. So it was a refreshingly appropriate use of an overused (and often misinterpreted) sonnet.
Best Scene Visually:
For a time, Fern takes a seasonal job, helping out with the Nebraska beet harvest. This was eye-opening for me. I was born in Nebraska. My mother’s whole family is from Nebraska. I’ve never known anything about the beet harvest. (I did eat pickled beets only when I lived there, but that’s because my mother would feed them to me and say, “Eat your beetie! beetie! beetie!” Buck Rogers style. Honestly, I think she was more into the pop culture tie-in than the beets.) I had no idea how beets are harvested, or that such a vast beet-harvesting industry exists in Nebraska (perhaps because we lived in Omaha, and I left when I was four).
Every moment of beet harvesting fascinated me because it was so alien. But one of the film’s most memorable images comes in this part.
In one scene, Fern sits beside an enormous mountain of beets. My husband noted, “Look at that sun through the clouds.” The sun does look unusual and arresting there, but I couldn’t get over the strange, stark image of the daunting mountain of beets.
Runner-up is the scene when Fern goes wandering away across a strange landscape.
Best Action Sequence:
Something goes very wrong when Dave brings Fern some licorice. I really felt the loss here.
Most Oscar-Worthy Moment, Frances McDormand:
Fern’s late conversation with Bob is my favorite moment in the movie and could be used as an Oscar clip for either actor (even though one of them isn’t, strictly speaking, acting).
But another great scene for McDormand comes when she returns to her old house.
The Negatives:
If you’re in the wrong frame of mind to watch Nomadland, you might consider it boring. It’s not the kind of movie where a bunch of stuff happens. Plus, the protagonist is a pensive 64-year-old woman wandering vaguely through the desert. The film really spoke to me because I was in the right place to receive its message, literally talking to my husband about struggling to process my mother’s death just minutes before we turned on the movie. Nomadland isn’t going to speak to everyone that way. Some people may be in the wrong mindset when they watch it. Others may never be in the right mindset. Their minds may work differently.
The only other complaint I have is that as I watched, I wished I knew more about how the film was made. I wish I had known going in that pretty much all of the other characters were played by non-actors, telling their real stories. I knew some were. I just didn’t know how many. I find director Chloé Zhao’s method of filmmaking somewhat mysterious. As I watched, I never knew what was real and what was fictional. I suppose that’s the point, though. Zhao has put together an incredible film and deserves an Oscar nomination herself.
Overall:
Nomadland is a beautiful film with a more positive feel than many other Oscar hopefuls. Though it tackles a serious topic, the film brings comfort and left me with a feeling of peace. Both Frances McDormand and director Chloé Zhao do Oscar-worthy work, and the film also has incredible cinematography and a hauntingly beautiful score. If you have Hulu, you should watch it before the Golden Globes this Sunday.