Nomadland: Beautiful, affecting film has a deep well of compassion for a forgotten fringe of society

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A-plus.

The most honoured movie of the 2020 season, and the Oscar frontrunner, finally arrives this weekend in Canadian movie theatres where permitted, and streaming via Disney+.

Nomadland is a beautiful and affecting film: a small scale, spare movie with a deep well of compassion at its center.

Frances McDormand stars as Fern, a recent widow.  She and her late husband lived and worked in Empire, Nevada, a one industry town that became a ghost town in 2011 when the gypsum plant shut down in the wake of the economic downturn.   

Frances McDormand fronts a cast partly made up of actual nomads in Nomadland.

Now, on her own, with just a van to her name, Fern travels to find work, starting with a seasonal job at an Amazon fulfilment center.

There, Fern makes friends with a fellow worker named Linda, (Linda May), who suggests that when the job ends, Fern join her at a rendezvous of sorts in Quartzsite, in the Sonoran desert in Arizona. It’s a gathering organized by a man named Bob Wells, (playing himself) for people who are van-dwellers or nomads, or who want to learn how to be one.

At first, Fern declines. But, unable to find a job and looking for a place to land, she finds her way there.  Through Linda, Fern meets a community of people who, share their stories, and show her the ropes of living in this way, without impinging on her personal boundaries.

Fern also connects with David (David Strathairn), another nomad.

One gets the sense that the quiet and self-contained Fern wasn’t looking for community. And yet, finding people who seem at peace with the way they’re now living their lives, either by choice or necessity, seems to be an easy fit for her.   

Fern is a fictional character. But the film, which is adapted from a non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, skims the borders between fact and fiction.   

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

This is the work of writer/director/editor Chloé Zhao, who deliberately blurs those lines by dropping Fern into a world of real people. 

This mix of actors and non-professionals won’t come as a surprise to anyone who saw Zhao’s previous equally affecting 2017 film The Rider. That movie also featured a cast of non-professional actors in a fictionalized version of a true story.  

And like The Rider, Nomadland has a somewhat documentary tone, with long quiet spaces and a naturalistic feel.  Wells, Linda, and others, play versions of themselves -  some with fictionalized backstories. Others, like Wells, speak from their own life and experience. In the hands of Zhao and McDormand, this mix of quiet performances and unembellished storytelling gives the film its joy and its poignancy.  

A lot rests on McDormand’s performance. One of Hollywood’s least showy actors, McDormand pulls Fern inward to such a degree that it’s hard to know her beyond what we see. Fern isn’t unfriendly or difficult, or incapable of joy. But she’s also watchful, and holding back.   

What was Fern like in her old life? She reveals so little that it’s almost impossible to imagine. And yet in that stillness, Fern is compelling. It’s a masterwork of restraint. 

Fern is the main story here. But the film thoughtfully gives us the world of the nomads.  Some have chosen to drop out, and live on their own terms. Some of the nomads are older people, a cohort that seems lost and forgotten in a youth-worshipping, consumer-driven country.  

Some are working people, who were also damaged in the economic failures in and around 2008, and who for various reasons have fallen through the cracks in society, or have spent their lives working in jobs that haven’t left them in a good financial place. And yet, this is a true community, with real connections. 

A lot of what works here is due to what Zhao brings to the table.

There’s a kind of magic to her storytelling.  She has a compassion for her characters and their lives and struggles. She doesn’t invade their space, or lard their storylines down with sentimentality. There’s a gentle honesty to the film.  

And she’s a minimalist, giving the film a quiet tone, a relaxed pace. At times the style of the film nods to to the work of Terrence Malick or Kelly Reichardt. Like them, Zhao uses elements of nature to ground the story. Few directors seem as able to coax the spiritual out of the desert as Chloe Zhao.

The cinematography contributes mightily to the way the film feels.  Zhao is, once again, working with Joshua James Richards whose poetic work adds an important layer. 

He’s been nominated for a cinematography Oscar, one of six for the film. McDormand has a nomination for Best Actress, Zhao has three nominations, for Director, Editor and Adapted Screenplay and the film itself is nominated for Best Picture, which it could very well win. 

Although it is not nominated, the film’s score, by Ludovico Einaudi, is another important element in this well-crafted film. 

Nomadland has been racking up awards since its debut at the Venice Film festival, where it won the top prize, the Golden Lion. It then won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, often considered a predictor of Oscar success. The American Film Institute named it movie of the year.  And it has gone through ‘awards season’ winning a number of Best Pictures honours. According to IMDB, its already won 211 awards..

Although Zhao’s film has touched a nerve with mainstream Hollywood, this is a true independent film in style and content. It is perhaps the  most ‘indie’ film to hit critical mass and become an Oscar nominated film, since Richard Linklater’s Boyhood.

Nomadland is quiet and reflective. It doesn’t give us everything we might want to know about Fern, but we’re drawn in nonetheless.  We don’t necessarily understand Fern by the end of the movie, or envy her choices, but we’ve been opened to something rich and human. 

CLICK HERE to watch a video of Bonnie Laufer’s interview with book author Jessica Bruder and nomad Bob Wells.

Nomadland. Written and directed by Chloe Zhao. Starring Frances McDormand, David Strathairn and Bob Wells. Debuts Friday, April 9 in theatres and streaming on Disney+