Film Review of Nomadland
By Geoff Carter
Nomadland is a movie that, like the people that inhabit it, travels unmarked roads into strange new territory. The movie is based Jessica Bruder’s book detailing her experiences traveling the country with a group of itinerant workers, mostly older Americans forced to go on the road in order to make ends meet. From the Amazon Camperforce Employee Program to Wall Drug restaurant jobs to the North Dakota beet fields, these economically misbegotten are forced to work out of their vans or RVs in order to survive.
Fern (Frances McDormand) leaves her town of Empire after the U.S. Gypsum Company has folded as a consequence of the 2008 recession. She has lost her home, her job, everything. She packs up her van, (fondly named Vanguard), before heading out to work a seasonal job at the Amazon Fulfillment Center. While there, she meets up with Linda May, another itinerant, who persuades her to attend a desert rendezvous in Arizona put on by Bob Wells, who has engineered a support system for the nomad population.
At the rendezvous, the nomads listen to Wells as he espouses their rights as workers and reinforces the need for them to support each other. After most of the others leave, Fern blows a tire and asks a neighbor, Swankie, for help. The two of them eventually become friends; Swankie confides to Fern that she is dying of cancer but reassures her friend that her life has been well-spent. She describes past experiences, including brushes with natural wonders, encounters with wildlife, and other wonderful occurences. She describes kayaking downriver beneath a nesting flight of swallows and feeling the sensation that—caught between the birds in flight and their reflection in the water—that she is flying amongst them. The next morning, Swankie moves on.
Nomadland tiptoes a very fine line between traditional narrative film and cinema verité. While understanding this is a feature film, the audience cannot help but be struck by the lack of artifice in the production. From the automated workings inside the Amazon Fulfillment Center to the gritty sugar beet processing center to the makeshift nomad campgrounds, everything looks real and genuine. There is very little sense of managed production or contrivance: somehow, throughout the entire experience, the film exudes a tone of authenticity unusual for a feature film.
Part of this sensibility is no doubt due to the use of non-actors in key roles. Other than McDormand and David Strathairn, most parts are played by non-actors. When real-life nomad Linda May begins describes her dream home or when Swankie talks about her sparrows and her final destination, the film strays into a blurred boundary between reality and fiction. These nomads exist; they are part of the new American economic reality and this film is both a record and a testament to their courage and fortitude. But this film is more than a documentary.
Director Chloe Zhao has tapped into a vein of American sensibility that is all at once stirring, disturbing, and beautiful. As Fern and her cohorts move from campsite to campsite tucked in and amongst some of the most beautiful country in the United States, the audience lives the sights, sounds, and everyday experience of the travelers—beautiful sunsets, stirring landscapes, and majestic mountains. Their nomadic lifestyle has brought these folks in touch with the natural rhythms of the land. Time and again, Zhao’s camera caresses the landscapes, the skies, and the majesty of the landscape, conveying the power of the natural world.
Later in the film, Fern’s sister comments that she and the other nomads are very much like the early pioneers, constantly searching for new lands and experiences. While this sentiment may seem condescending, part of it rings true. While all the nomads may not have a choice of where to live, Fern does (as her sister invites her to stay), but she decides to go back on the road. Fern values her independence too much to stay, telling her sister that she could live in a room in one house. She rejects the creature comforts and safety of a house for the hardships of living in a cold van with no plumbing. Is it stubborn pride or something more?
As the film unfurls its beautiful landscapes and sunsets and we watch Fern sitting beside her van, watching and thinking, the beauty of this nomadic existence begins to reveal itself. It is not the aesthetics of Nature or peace found in solitude, but there is an underlying current of the essence of existence here—of a different type of knowledge.
In his book, Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne writes about science imposing order in the world through logic. He mentions that Temple Grandin, in her book Animals in Translation, proposes that cows with a white patch of fur on their body seem shyer than others and that such an explanation may seem preposterous to logicians. It seems too intuitive, too random.
But Byrne goes on to say, “I sense that the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe…I wouldn’t be surprised if poetry—poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs—is how the world works. The world isn’t logical, it’s a song.”
This is the essence of the sensibility revealed in Nomadland. The patterns, designs, and rhythms of the nomad life is how their world—our world—works. While part of their song may be a litany of desperation or frustration, of economic hardship, living a life so close to Nature, and with complete independence, is very American. This is almost Walden on wheels.
The nomads do suffer. Many are older and are struggling to get by, but the film doesn’t seek to elicit pity or sympathy for them; rather, it demands respect for their bravery, stubbornness, and fortitude. These nomads are, indeed, the new pioneers. They are the epitome of hope.
