鈥楴omadland鈥�: A wispy, affecting vision of life on the road
Set in the wake of the Great Recession, 鈥淣omadland,鈥� with its focus on聽the choices people make when faced with economic hardship, resonates now.
Set in the wake of the Great Recession, 鈥淣omadland,鈥� with its focus on聽the choices people make when faced with economic hardship, resonates now.
The affecting, uneven 鈥淣omadland,鈥� set early in 2011 in the wake of the Great Recession but equally pertinent today, is a road movie of a very special sort. Fern, played by Frances McDormand, lost her husband a year after the closure of a gypsum factory in Empire, Nevada, that put nearly everybody out of work. Even the ZIP code of the town has been erased. With no desire to stay on, she packs up a camper and heads out across the high and low deserts, working seasonal jobs to get by.
She joins a migratory band of fellow travelers, a few of whom she befriends and reconnects with along the way. Some of these nomads, mostly older adults, choose to live like this because they believe they have no better way to survive. Others just like the peace and freedom.
Written and directed by Chlo茅 Zhao, the film is based on Jessica Bruder鈥檚 2017 nonfiction book 鈥淣omadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,鈥� and includes several of the book鈥檚 real-life vagabonds, such as the ailing, valiant Swankie and the irrepressible Linda May,聽playing variants of their actual selves. Fern is not based on any one individual, but her singularity, like a character from a Steinbeck novel, makes her seem both her own person and symbolic of a larger reality. 聽 聽
Nothing terribly dramatic happens in 鈥淣omadland,鈥� and at times this can make the film seem wispy and digressive 鈥� a piece of arty anomie with a semidocumentary overlay. The challenges of maintaining life鈥檚 basic necessities are downplayed. Fern faces few dangers: no hazardous encounters, no thefts, no violence.聽This seems more an idealization of her situation than a reality.聽Her biggest crisis comes when her camper breaks down and she cadges money for its repair from her sister Dolly (Melissa Smith), who lives聽with her husband and children聽outside Denver聽in conventional, and, in the film鈥檚 view, boring, middle-class comfort.
Fern reluctantly pays her a visit, and it is in this scene, more than halfway into the movie, that a bit of Fern鈥檚 family backstory unfolds. She left home as soon as she could, married hastily, and moved, according to Dolly, to 鈥渢he middle of nowhere.鈥� Not altogether convincingly, Dolly commends the 鈥減ioneer spirit鈥� of the big sister she looked up to, whose departure years ago left a big hole in her life.聽
It is also in this Denver setting that the film tips its ideological hand, just as it did earlier when the real-life nomad guru, Bob Wells, regales his followers with talk of the 鈥渢yranny of the dollar.鈥� Fern chastises Dolly鈥檚 husband, George (Warren Keith), a real estate broker, for encouraging people 鈥渢o invest their whole life savings, go into debt, just to buy a house they can鈥檛 afford.鈥� The implication is clear: Footloose Fern incarnates the spirit that made America great, a spirit that has been squelched in a mercenary economy gone bust. 鈥淚鈥檓 not homeless,鈥� she tells people. 鈥淚鈥檓 houseless.鈥�
Romanticizing Fern in this way glosses over her emotional complexity. Despite the film鈥檚 erratic attempt to pigeonhole her, it鈥檚 obvious that Fern鈥檚 wanderlust owes far more to psychological need than ideological persuasion. She quietly affirms several times a lasting love for her late husband, but the affirmation seemingly lacks conviction. When a fellow nomad, beautifully played by David Strathairn, attempts to get close to her, she barely registers the overture. As was also true of the vengeful mother McDormand played in 鈥淭hree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,鈥� the role of Fern gives McDormand license to indulge an opaqueness that is often more gnomic than expressive. Perhaps she and Zhao felt that being more demonstrative would shatter the film鈥檚 wayward poetic mood.聽
They needn鈥檛 have worried because, despite the movie鈥檚 manipulations, that mood often comes through anyway. It鈥檚 there in the scenes where Fern is simply walking alone in a deserted RV park, or floating unclothed and unobserved in a mountain stream, or just watching a herd of bison from the window of her camper. In these moments, and others like them, 鈥淣omadland鈥� is mysteriously moving. 聽
Peter Rainer is the Monitor鈥檚 film critic. 鈥淣omadland鈥� is available via theaters and streaming service Hulu on Feb. 19.聽