What an incredible movie Nomadland is! Chloé Zhao has created a masterpiece based on Jessica Bruder‘s book. It does a thorough perspicacious examination of the lives of Nomads of the RV culture in America, through a third-person perspective of its protagonist Frances McDormand who, by the way, is absolutely fantastic in her role as Fern.
What strikes out are the lives of the many diverse nomads that it portrays. Nomadland movie expertly delves into deeper waters to do a scrupulous study of their stories one by one. It is a clever case study per se that poses so many existential questions that you can’t help but wonder about all those thousands of neglected people who have been dealing with such heart-wrenching adversities that they have ended up choosing a contrasting lifestyle that brings them further closer to nature.
To many of us, their nomadic step sounds quite extreme and eccentric, but highly justified if you try to regard their mindset. Goes without saying that there are so many cool benefits to it, but Nomadland’s primal focus remains on the backstories of the sufferers for whom living in an RV is more of a rehabilitating and cathartic experience. It would be for you too, as you put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist, and let her take you on a carefree joyride across different enclaves of her country.
Nomadland Movie Direction
The movie is based on a non-fiction account by Jessica Bruder called Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. Chloe takes inspiration based on its materials and forms a motion picture sizing the content based on real-life characters who have been part of the RV culture.
I have often talked about in my many reviews and analyses how a movie seldom does a book justice. This movie is an exception. Books let you savour the soul of a story, but crafting a movie out of mere spoken word is an art. Chloe Zhao masters that craft in her 1 hour 47 minute of a thoughtful panorama.
The content is woven intricately using some real-life stories that come straight from the hearts of real-life nomads like Linda May, Bob Wells, and Swankie. Fern walking across their lives like a true nomad goes on to reflect life in its very essence. The way she comes across them feels like experiences colliding, and then eventually when she is forced to bid them farewell, you can’t help but realize that nothing is constant, that one needs to always keep moving. That’s the very gist of everything that life mirrors.
Chloe Zhao’s frames are long and the brooding kind. They are bolstered more on the performance front with Frances McDormand taking charge and directing the flow of the movie based on her actions. Chloe stunningly captures the beauty and the fright, the ups and downs of a person hitting the road. All the things that could go wrong, or could go right, reasons behind a fellow nomad choosing the said way of life are all strewn across Nomadland. She tries to capture as much nature as she could in the backdrop of her frames – little joys of life that we overlook on a day-to-day basis.
Frances McDormand as Fern
For the most part of the film, Fern drives across America, doing various chores garnering experiences that come with living in a van. You realize a sense of mystery developing about this character that you can’t put your finger on.
You are in a third-person narrative watching stories unfold like some reality cinema. Fern figuratively plays your ears as you come across poignant tales that make you go weak in the knees. It is almost like having a discussion with your neighbors and coming to hear their stories for the first time. Everyone has got one. Aren’t we too busy leading a coiled-up life?
Frances is phenomenal as Fern. Apart from the apparent – that she is ballsy, she also has a personality that is quite off-centre. She just needs enough to live by – already has a shelter, does menial jobs to feed herself and good sleep and health to get by.
Why is she out there? Why is she doing this? You often think about this question as you see her rev through life. Her mysterious backstory reveals itself gradually in the movie as she lets herself open up about her past, what caused her to take that decision to hit the road, and why she can’t go back to leading a life everyone favours.
Parts that make Nomadland movie more engaging (also revealing a thing or two about her furtive life) are holed up in its later half. As an independent person, Fern is yet to come across a situation where she might need outside help. Life has its own way of bringing you head-on to the things you dread. Her RV giving up on her, and her asking for help is suggestive of that very notion.
Escaping Material Life
Selling everything to come to scraps, is how some conceive the RV life. But there’s more to it than meets the eye. Until we do some proper scrutiny there, we wouldn’t understand the big picture.
All our lives we have been running after material things. We have been pulling ourselves closer to comfort. Fans, refrigerator, TV, furniture, all those things that a house constitute of are all luxuries that our body doesn’t really need. We can survive without them, but it has become more of a – ‘what the body likes now’. We barely pay heed to – ‘what about the mind?’ Our body can reap benefits to stay at peace but will our mind be ever at peace?
Ask yourself this question – What are the most essential things that your body needs in order to survive? You need food and water that’s the basic stuff, not to mention the obligatory nature prerogative. You need good sleep. That’s all we do on this planet, that’s all we have ever done since the onset of time. What is leading life if not us trying to keep busy?
Think about our ancestors, the ones who had nothing on them? How did they do they make it when there was nothing? Didn’t they survive their time? Didn’t they always find something to do in nature’s womb?
Home is What You Carry Within You
For people who own a house, they would relate the most to what I am about to say. Even though it acts as a patch of land on earth, a house ends up tying you down. It is your demarked boundary that has your name tag on it. That land would become transferrable when you pass away. Having it in the first place wouldn’t matter. What would matter is the experience, or the stories that you amassed out there in the womb of nature.
I like how Angela puts it:
Isn’t home something that you carry within you?
Other Characters in Nomadland movie
Being a nomad has its benefits. It entails meeting wonderful people and coming across their tragic stories.
Each character in Nomadland brings to the tale their unique experiences. While Linda May is a friend Fern never had, Swankie is one of those people who seems bitter at first but ends up being a pleasant well-wisher. The latter becomes a good mentor when she shares her enchanting experiences on the road with Fern.
Dave played by David Strathairn becomes a really good friend who ends up giving up his nomad life for the sake of his family. Eventually, he invites Fern over to stay too, giving her a chance to leave the nomad life behind and settle for good with him.
All in all they make her solo sojourn a lot easier.
The Ending of Nomadland Explained
Fern still hadn’t got over Bo, her husband with whom she had bought a house in Empire. Following Bo’s death, she had simply left. She hadn’t had a proper closure when she had gotten out of that place and hit the road. She was grieving all this time. It was simply impossible for her to settle down. The very idea of peace to her was traversing the roads, being in sync with nature. She couldn’t give all that up because that’s what gave her joy the most.
Fern leaving Dave’s house at the break of dawn goes on to show how it was almost impossible for her to be at just one place. Choosing to stay with Dave would have meant a constant reminder of what her husband Bo had always wanted, and how she would have found herself leading the same old life that she had always hated.
She is a free bird who can’t be confined within four walls. Her idea of home is how Angela had put it – the one that you carry within.
Eventually, we see her revisiting Empire and the house that she and Bo had bought together. She has her final adieu before hitting the road once again, leaving the past behind for good.
The Bob Wells Community
The movie celebrates the hero Bob Wells is. He is basically playing himself when he explains the real idea behind what he is doing.
I think of an analogy as a workhorse. The workhorse that is willing to work itself to death, and then be put out to pasture. And that’s what happens to so many of us. If society was throwing us away and sending us as the workhorse out to the pasture, we workhorses have to gather together and take care of each other. And that’s what this is all about. The way I see it is that the Titanic is sinking and economic times are changing. And so my goal is to get the lifeboats out and get as many people into the lifeboats as I can.
Somebody has to take care of these people. When they get old, they are already discarded by society that they didn’t want to be a burden on. They have lived a fair share of their lives. Now they seek peace and solace, to become one with nature. He lets them all have a common ground and looks after them like a father. You can’t imagine a kinder deed than that in today’s world.
I like what Bob admires about the nomad life. Life should be lived without saying any final goodbyes. He chooses to say:
I will see you down the road.
That way even though it takes him months or years, but he always runs into them. The ‘running into people again’, that’s what he likes most about the whole experience. There are no final goodbyes. You already know how bad you’d feel if there was one.
Check out the trailer of Nomadland movie here:
Nomadland
Pros
- Extraordinary Story
- Outstanding Screenplay
- Great Direction
- Frances McDormand as Fern
Cons
- Acting of Real Life Nomads
