Nomadland
Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century from 2018 is a non-fiction work of first-person journalism which shines a forensic spotlight on a hitherto neglected underclass: workers, normally of retirement age or beyond who, as have taken to America’s highways in RVs or modified vans in search of seasonal work in soul-destroying fast food outlets or cavernous Amazon warehouses. The subtitle of Bruder’s work makes it clear that she sees them as casualties of the “Great Recession”, pitiable economic fringe-dwellers who, rather than spending their declining years in leisure, are forced to lead a makeshift, itinerant lifestyle scrounging a meagre subsistence income. At first glance, this would seem to be unlikely source material for a mainstream motion picture, but Chinese American film-maker Chloe Zhao’s screenplay for Nomadland (2010), whilst ostensibly a work of fiction, draws heavily on Bruder’s journalism, is rather more nuanced. Whilst taking care to avoid an overly romantic Jack Kerouac-like depiction of the footloose, “on the road” lifestyle, Zhao does convey a sympathetic portrait of the diverse characters that comprise the community of nomads and their mutually supportive network. Many of these characters, such as Linda May and Charlotte (“Swankie”), featured in Bruder’s original piece, and as non-professional actors play lightly fictionalised versions of themselves in Zhao’s film. Indeed, it is the presence of so many so-called “non-actors” in the cast, allied with Zhao’s naturalistic dialogue and film-making style that give the film such a feeling of documentary-style immediacy and authenticity.
The film’s central performance is an improbable star turn by Frances McDormand as Fern, a recently widowed 60-something who stows the remnants of her former life in a storage locker in the grandiosely named town of Empire in Nevada and hits the road in a battered van which she christens Vanguard. (The use of the name ‘Empire’ might seem like a heavy-handed metaphor in a film in which the theme of economic decline and entropy is explicit, except that Empire is a real place, a small town virtually wiped off the map by the closure of the gypsum plant that sustained it). Fern is initially taciturn, only becoming more ebullient as she forms friendships with some of her fellow travellers like the aforementioned Linda and Swankie, but she has a hard outer shell and only rarely, if ever, does she drop her guard. We do get the occasional hint that Fern has a much richer inner life than her circumstances might suggest, such as the occasion when she launches into a word-perfect recitation of a Shakespearean sonnet to help out a young fellow traveller in need of romantic inspiration. Gradually we piece together enough of her back story that we realise that her straitened financial plight is only a partial motivation for her; that a rootless, transient, ‘wanderlust’ lifestyle has always suited her temperament. Significantly, when presented with the opportunity to “settle down”, put down roots and lead a more conventional, stable existence, she rejects it in favour of the habits and customs acquired in her nomadic life. As Fern says, early in the film, she is “houseless, not homeless.”
David Strathairn (Dave), one of the few other professional actors in the cast, also portrays a fellow nomad who repeatedly crosses Fern’s path. In a more conventional, mainstream screenplay, his tentative romantic overtures toward Fern would have come to fruition and offer her character a clear if contrived path to redemption. But in Zhao’s carefully constructed universe, Fern needs no such redemption, and Dave is also navigating his own fraught personal path to redemption via a reconciliation with his estranged son. Instead, it becomes clear that Fern’s never-ending journey is her way of dealing with grief and loss, not only bereavement, but the loss of the life and the community that she shared with her late husband. McDormand conveys Fern’s complex depths, complete with her complicated hinterland, in a finely observed and executed performance. As one of the film’s producers, she doesn’t shy away from Zhao’s need to portray all dimensions of the nomad life, including the least glamourous; surely McDormand is surely the only multiple Oscar winner to be filmed defecating into a bucket. But McDormand is also allowed to depict Fern’s capacity for wonder. There are memorable scenes (brought vividly to life by cinematographer Joshua James Richards) where Fern is shown exploring the giant redwoods of the Pacific northwest, and, with no evident self-consciousness, swimming naked in an isolated natural spring. In one especially poignant scene late in the film, Fern is seen returning to the now deserted Empire and wistfully exploring her former home and workplace, now derelict and desolate. It is this encounter that leads to Fern’s singular moment of catharsis. Despite her stoic resolve, Fern cannot outrun the dark cloud of desperation, isolation and fatalism that seems to hang over her and the entire film.
And that seems a recurring theme with the various travelers that cross Fern’s path; they are all dealing with loss in one form or another, whether it be the loss of a livelihood, a loved one or the ultimate loss that awaits us all, occasioned by age, infirmity and mortality. Even Bob Wells, the self-styled guru and seer of this mobile nomad community, has a similar back story. When we first encounter Bob, he is expounding his world view on the decline of the American economy and the desirability of the road-based, mobile life in a latter-day, improvised Sermon-on-the-Mount setting. His long white beard makes him reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet and adds to his air of avuncular authority and mystique, as he exhorts his followers in invest in “wheel estate”. And yet Bob, too, is struggling with his own burden of loss, the suicide of his son. And it is this theme, more than economic privation or the contemplation of old age and mortality, that creates the film’s lasting impression. Nomadland elicits profound reflection on the human condition by inviting the viewer to reflect on human beings, seemingly tossed aside and left to fend for themselves by the impersonal society at large, still able to seek out and find crucial and meaningful human connection.