I remember a while back when I saw The Florida Project, I felt the impact of a train at full speed. Here was a film that had forced me to open my eyes and focus on a large-scale issue that we have always failed to see. Through the eyes of a very small kid, realism set and it stayed with us for a long time.
It’s a similar feeling to what you may reckon with Nomadland, the dramatic juggernaut released in 2020 which provided a look into the shades of poverty in the center of America. In Nomadland, the story to be told is not the typical tragedy you may expect. It’s actually a developed consequence of something larger and recognizable whose possibility we can’t even comprehend.
In America, people are not poor, let alone people don’t decide to be. I thought Nomadland would take in a landslide that would deconstruct a social misconception. It’s way more than that. Nomadland is the definite tale of resilience during harsh times, but the question of human will is what people are not talking about when referring to the film. And this is particularly the most important aspect of Fern’s struggle: Is she there because she doesn’t have any other choice, or is she part of her own denial scheme?
During 2011, a major fall in the economy causes Fern to lose her job in a plant in Empire, Nevada. After realizing the town is practically defunct (it even loses its zip code!), Fern decides to purchase a van and live like a nomad. It’s unclear how long she’s been doing this as she’s becoming acquainted with her lifestyle, and she’s made some friends along the way. Nevertheless, she’s always improvising and always looks amateurish. She lands a few seasonal jobs and she continues to thrive in a community desolate of progress, technology and basic healthcare.
As the film goes on, we come to terms with what keeps Fern in her insistent mindset. She also lost her husband to cancer, and letting go is something she doesn’t think about. Even when we realize her circumstances are not that as dreadful as we thought, we understand Fern’s need for staying in this primal and basic state.
What’s more important than Nomadland’s first impression is the true nature of the world the story takes place in. The road of a deserted America wasteland that holds many in its barren grip. Fern travels alongside nomads who make a living out of selling memories, crafts, and whatever’s left of their physical strength. Roundtables of how to survive on this road that offers no easy ways out, and a general message of “going against the establishment”. Each of them smiles, and in these smiles, you don’t easily identify the choices versus the enforced decisions.
Fern listens and digests these lives. She becomes part of a larger organism that we can’t believe she’s part of, and insists being part of. In two sequences, when she is exposed to the mundane and civilized side of society, we get more information about her reasons. Our reaction is far from celebratory. Hers is an admirable campaign we know we can’t possibly be part of because we are simply used to being inside a cement and concrete jungle that’s supposed to make us feel safe.
Chloé Zhao masterfully directs a film that’s not easy to sell, even when we consider who portrays Fern. As it happened with The Rider, also directed by Zhao, some stories are simply not part of a universal vernacular. But in Nomadland she asks a more general question, one that’s easy to understand but very hard to answer. She speaks to us with a humanity that’s not often seen in Hollywood. She, as her film, is a surefire award winner.