NOMADLAND Review
A fascinating conundrum arises during Chloe Zhao’s NOMADLAND. In the director’s depiction of one woman’s solitary journey across America after the Great Recession subsequently shuts down her job and later, her entire town, the film straddles an interesting line between fiction and reality. Based off of a book by Jessica Bruder, Zhao conveys the tale of Fern (Frances McDormand) through a documentary-like lens, following her in her day-to-day travels and escapades as she cruises around the American wilds in her van-turned-home. Outside of McDormand and a few other professional actors, Zhao employs real people who actually live the nomadic lifestyle that Fern herself embarks on, inching NOMADLAND ever closer to reality.
And here’s where I get caught up. I’m never against realism when it comes to film; for the most part a film that feels real has a better chance of digging at deeper emotions than those films that push reality away in favor of the fantastic, but with that being said, a film’s realness only feels so if it feels legitimate to the world it creates or displays. While Zhao has no trouble in bringing a little seen sub-culture of America to screen, capturing the family-like air of its roving group of travelers who spend their time drifting among the vast isolated lands of America, the decision to add a fictional component in the shape of our main character throws things off. Make no mistake, as she does in seemingly every role she gets, McDormand as the gruff Fern does her thing here, finding a struggling yet tragically persistent humanity in her symbolic character that personifies those thousands and thousands of Americans suddenly cast aloft among the scarring seas of unemployment and poverty at the hands of corrupt billionaires. But throughout the entire film, as Zhao quite literally documents the tragedies of other real life nomads that Fern comes across, the idea of hiring an actress to “pretend” to be a nomad (inherently, a person whose roving lifestyle was created through mainly unforeseen loss), the clash between fiction and reality seems unneeded at best and advantageous at worst. At times, while McDormand adequately camouflages as a woman adrift, one wonders why the filmmaker didn’t just resort to tell the story of the nomadic lifestyle through the voices of those actually living that life; you’ve already cast them as pretty much themselves, what’s to stop you from actually documenting their own real tales? The intentions, I imagine, are pure from Zhao, but in realizing such a clear view of a real life group of people out in those wilds, centering that world around a fictional character sometimes allows those actually living that life to get lost among Fern’s own fictional journey.
From the deserts of Arizona and Nevada to the crisp forests of California and dry plains of the Dakotas, these people become the closest thing to what Fern can call “family”. In that form, they not only allow Fern to drift away from her own internal pains, but also grant Zhao the chance to dig at the psychology operating behind such a lifestyle and its participants. In their aimlessness, these nomads, Fern now included, find something to give their shattered lives meaning, whether that be the odd jobs they take here and there or in the constant upkeep of their own vehicles. But even when the opportunity to go back to a “normal” life arrives, these nomads simply trudge to the next plot of empty land, almost stubbornly so, in the search for something they lost…or to simply lose themselves entirely. In the case for Fern, we see the promise of new love (in the form of David Strathairn’s fellow nomad) or at the very least, friendship, threaten her new lifestyle. Zhao strings along this tension, between the return to “normal” life or the trudging yet tough independent living, as Fern’s tale wanders towards a conclusion that grants her some form of bittersweet acceptance towards her new life. The filmmaker never once sullies the authenticity of the world she focuses on, instead finding the natural trials, both personal and otherwise, that face Fern and her compatriots.
That authenticity comes alive thanks to NOMADLAND’s impeccable visuals. Even as she demonstrates the on-Earth grittiness of Fern’s nature filled journey, Zhao works with cinematographer Joshua James Richards to bring to life the untapped wilderness still thriving in a modern day America. Where the small towns are granted a decayed and oppressive glow, the national parks and wilderness that Fern and the nomads traverse expand NOMADLAND into portrait-like beauty, almost Western-like in their vast visages and colorful hues. This pervasive natural beauty at times helps carry those slower moments of the film where nothing naturally happens as NOMADLAND digs deeper into the slow, trudging days of its characters, where the most exciting things to happen are replacing a flat tire in a barren desert. With an over-grandiose score featuring the work of Ludovico Einaudi, Zhao’s film about people elevates into grander territory, a film that is just as much about the personal journey of grief and acceptance as it is about the idea of American persistence even in the face of dire odds. Fern and her nomad partners find themselves stuck in between the images of the pitiable victims and the free spirits content to a life of exploration and constant movement. Whether Zhao find this placement as sad or inspiring is up for debate.
In that air of uncertainty, the accomplishments of NOMADLAND shine. What Zhao does here is detail a world that is living and breathing beneath society’s feet through an uncompromising lens. While the use of fictional characters and situations never allows her film to gain that 100% personal feeling, at times feeling as manufactured as the Amazon warehouse that Fern sometimes works in, NOMADLAND is hard to argue against as a unique entry from a rapidly interesting filmmaker.
3.5/5
