Nomadland (2021) * *

 

Directed by:  Chloe Zhao

Starring:  Frances McDormand, David Strathairn

The prologue of Nomadland tells of a mine in northern Nevada which closed in 2011 and months later the entire ZIP code of the town where the mine was located was discontinued.   The residents of the mining town picked up and left once the mine closed, or lost everything beforehand.    Some, like Fern (McDormand) traveled in her van looking for work and living out of the van.   Fern would work during the Christmas season at Amazon and once the seasonal work is over, she would hit the road again.   Fern refurbished the inside of the van to seem more like a home to her.   She runs into friends at a store who offer her a place to stay, but Fern proudly refuses.   "I'm houseless, not homeless," she tells the daughter of her friend.  

Nomadland is being lauded for including non-actors playing themselves as nomads in the same predicament as Fern.   I find this is the biggest issue with Nomadland.   When Fern is interacting with the real nomads, it feels like movie star McDormand is invading their world instead of inhabiting it.  As great an actor as McDormand is, we are witnessing worlds collide on screen and the magic is lost.    It's as if McDormand is guest-starring in a documentary about nomads.    We are consistently aware that McDormand is a professional actor and the real nomads are not.   David Strathairn also appears in a subplot as a nomad who tires of life on the road and settles down with his son and newborn grandchild.  Fern can't abide this type of lifestyle and after a brief visit, she lights out for life on the highway.   

We learn about this unique phenomenon but are hardly engrossed by it.   The nomadic lifestyle provides a certain degree of freedom, but the RV's and vans have to be filled up with gas and people have to eat and perform bodily functions.   We are witness to Fern excreting into a bucket.   Nomadland is akin to 2012's Beasts of the Southern Wild, which covered the lives of the poverty-stricken people impacted by Hurricane Katrina.   That movie was more stark and realistic, partly because it was full of non-professional actors and unknowns who inhabited that world more convincingly.  

I can't fault the performances of McDormand or Strathairn except to say they are at the service of the wrong movie.    Nomadland should've been either a documentary about the nomadic lifestyle or a scripted drama featuring mostly actors in the nomad roles.   The combination of both is distracting.