On Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland
“I often feel like an outsider wherever I go, so I’m always attracted to stories about identity and the meaning of home.”
If there are any rules to telling stories, one would think if a protagonist sees an animal in peril, the character in question should always save it, if only to preserve an audience’s empathy for them. In Chloé Zhao’s patient, soft spoken Nomadland (2020), Fern (Frances McDormand) finds an abandoned dog, but decides not to rescue it. There is no scene where the dog returns later in the movie, or even a later pick-up shot of the dog being taken care of. Like everything in Nomadland, love exists, but it is in short supply and requires careful allocation. The road is a cruel place, where a single friendship can break your heart.
Like her previous feature, The Rider (2020), Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland looks closely at the harsh, human reality of a working-class subculture that has been left behind by whatever the American dream is supposed to be. Nomadic retirees like Fern lie on the poverty line, living in their vans, traveling across a modern frontier, hoping each day for small moments of kindness and a seasonal job that can provide the money to keep their engines running. They are tough bunch, unwilling to beg for help, hard working, and keenly aware at the fragility of their oncoming twilight years. They can’t afford to be old.
In the dawn filled quiet when Nomads walk up to greet their temporary neighbors, you could believe you’re watching a documentary.
What is to be so admired about Nomadland is its verisimilitude. Of the characters that surround Fern’s travels, many of them are the real Nomads that Jessica Bruder writes about in her non-fiction book that inspired the movie. Linda May, playing a version of herself, is especially a stand-out, a loving friend who lightly carries the weight of hard-living that would most certainly crush most of us. May invites Fern to a desert gathering of Nomads, hosted by the real life Bob Wells, a man who established the philosophy of Vandwelling, who teaches survival tactics like steath-parking and van repair to those new to the traveling lifestyle. Here Chloé Zhao blurs the line so deftly between fiction and reality that you remain completely convinced of the humanity of each moment. In the dawn filled quiet when Nomads walk up to greet their temporary neighbors, you could believe you’re watching a documentary. Fern lives simultaneously alone and yet also alongside a new surrogate family, each person kind and forthright about their regrets, their mistakes, their health.
The Amazon fulfillment center is a fruitful source of temporary work for them, particularly during the winter months when online shopping hits peak trading before Christmas. Visually the change is shocking - we move from the pastel sunsets of open desert to the hard concrete of the factory floor. Suddenly the reality of the temp-work marketplace is shown as a replacement for what should be successful retirement. For these Nomads, working seasonally in Amazon will be required until their very last years. Bruder writes about 10 hour work days “spent roaming the concrete-slab floor - a process Amazon refers to as ‘work hardening.’”
As Fern adapts to her nomadic life, we get intimate insight into life on the road - the need to use a bucket instead of a toilet, the deteriorating health and heartbreaking story of her new friend Swankie, who defies being in a hospital for seeing the country she loves one last time. Defiance is a word that frequently comes up when thinking about Nomadland. For all the quietness the film revels in, there is such fight in the minds of these characters. They simmer with the will to keep going, even when all normal considerations call it impossible.
Wonderfully Zhao resists the temptation to raise the temperature of her character’s emotions.
Undoubtedly the film sparks brightly when we hear the stories of those in the community talking about their working-class history. And yet with all this weight they carry from the past, remarkably the film avoids wallowing in its own sadness, something it teeters toward but never capitalizes on. Wonderfully Zhao resists the temptation to raise the temperature of her character’s emotions. Instead each actor remains expertly controlled in depicting life as a balanced equation of good and bad. Fern doesn’t want your sympathy and remains defiantly independent, even in the face of a developing relationship with Dave (David Strathairn). This keeps true sadness at bay as she is constantly fighting not to take the easy way out of her situation. In the face of settling down, taking opportunities to make her life easier, she chooses the hard road every time.
Of course Frances McDormand is the key. As an actress she defies the glamour of Hollywood, and in Nomadland she perfectly represents the earthy conduit we need to understand this lifestyle. Thankfully there is no big ‘Oscar scene,’ no angry climax for her to claim the accolades for which she was rightfully awarded. What’s wonderful is the commitment to defy commercial dramatic requirements for something more patient, intimate and ultimately more real. Why do we need such dramatic excess when Nomadland succeeds in making you believe that the best moments are those quiet expressions of living we make at dawn or dusk, just as time reminds us that it’s moving forward without us.
