Chloé Zhao sees a different side of America than I do. She gives her attention and her affection to people I tend to overlook or ignore. In Nomadland, as in her equally stunning film, The Rider, she shares her unique vision with incredible beauty and compassion. This new story gives us a glimpse of lives we may never experience and people we’ll never meet, and we are better for the sight.
From the very beginning, Nomadland is full of both wonder and pain. The camera lingers on awe-inspiring vistas of the American west, showing us landscapes of stunning, formidable beauty. We wander past mountains and rivers, through badlands and forests as we follow Fern on her travels. In the midst of this awe, though, we never escape the pain of the people who inhabit the glorious landscapes. We meet a now-joyful woman who nearly committed suicide a few years before; a kind woman whose eyes light up as she remembers the wonders she saw in years past, but who is slowly dying of cancer; a community leader who can hardly speak of the pain of losing his son; and many others who carry their own invisible burdens.
These nomads come together to build a community, and many of the film’s most joyful moments arrive as they experience the mundane tasks of life together. Tedious chores like cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry, chopping vegetables, or walking the floor of a giant Amazon warehouse are redeemed because they are shared. Their friendships are built on a common understanding: they all know they’re broken in some way, and they find the support they need as they lean on each other. And, through these friendships, we get to see some of their pain start to fade. One of my favorite moments of the film is when Bob and his formerly estranged son play a piano duet, improvising together to create something beautiful and mending some of the hurt of their past.
As we learn more about Fern, we see that she, too, is carrying her own pain even as she revels in the beauty of the world around her. At the beginning of the film, we see her sorting through belongings in a storage unit and finding a plate given to her by her dad, watch her experience a fresh wave of grief as she finds a jacket worn by her late husband. She carries those memories in physical form on her travels, some of her most precious possessions. She wanders the country, free to live and work wherever she chooses, but simultaneously trapped by the memories she’s holding onto. Fern’s attitude is encapsulated in the poem she used as her wedding vows, which she recites to a young vagrant on the side of the road. “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” concludes with lines that capture how she feels responsible for keeping those who have passed on alive in her memory:
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
Through Frances McDormand’s glorious performance, though, we also get to see Fern begin to break those chains. She returns to the storage unit at the film’s end, and she’s finally ready to move on. She gives away all the things she’d been holding on to. She visits her husband’s now-defunct workplace and the home they shared, and she walks out the other side free. She’s found some comfort in hoping that she’ll see those she loves again “down the road”.
In many ways, Nomadland is trying to accomplish the same goal Fern is pursuing throughout much of the film: it’s remembering these often-forgotten people and giving them life in our collective imagination. The incredible cast, almost all of whom are real-life vagrants, not professional actors, bring the characters to the screen in all their complexity and heartbreak and joy. The film is filled with lovely cinematography, a perfect score, and excellent editing (also done by the multi-talented Zhao), but its true beauty comes through Fern and Linda May and Bob and Swankie and the other nomads who point us to the value of community and laughter and wonder. I love these people, and I’m so thankful that Zhao’s vision allowed me to meet them.
