Movie Review - Nomadland

Director: Chloé Zhao
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 107 minutes
Year: 2020
Starring: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Gay DeForest, Patricia Grier, Linda May, Angela Reyes, Carl R. Hughes, Douglas G. Soul, Ryan Aquino, Teresa Buchanan, Karie Lynn McDermott Wilder, Brandy Wilber, Makenzie Etcheverry, Bob Wells, Annette Webb, Rachel Bannon, Charlene Swankie, David Strathairn, Bryce Bedsworth, Sherita Deni Coker
 
Description: A woman in her sixties (Frances McDormand) who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

Review: Director Chloé Zhao has made a picture-perfect film about the tragedy of contemporary America. With six nominations of which three turned into wins, this melancholy road movie along a new economic frontier was the big winner at the 93^rd Academy Awards.
The film has a special sense of immersion. The most beautiful light, just after sunrise or before sunset. It streaks across the past glories of the American landscape. Zhao won an Academy Award for director and also took home the best motion picture award. Lead actress Frances McDormand won for her role as Fern, which makes it her third Academy Award win (previously for “Fargo” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”). Fern is a sixty-something from the small industrial town of Empire, Nevada, which is wiped off the map after the economic crash in 2008. Quite literally: the entire zip code area no longer exists several years later. When Fern’s husband subsequently dies, there is nothing that binds Fern to her decaying surroundings. She exchanges her house for a converted van and chooses a nomadic existence in search of work.  
“Nomadland” is an adaptation of Jessica Bruder’s 2017 non-fiction book of the same name. McDormand pitched the book to hao and briefly measured herself against the nomadic lifestyle as well. She spent six months in her own van, traveling through seven American states during the filming of “Nomandland”. It provides a particularly authentic picture of life on the road, in part because the other nomads she encounters are played by non-professional actors  who are interpreting versions of themselves.
Zhao is ultimately looking for the sense of dignity that these homeless Americans try to carry with them as they ride out into the horizon. The images are beautiful, but they do not disguise the unbounded melancholy that accompanies them. The heartbreaking encounters between Fern and the nomads are diligently searching for a sense of belonging. This film also emphasizes that it’s about living with loss and grief. Despite everything, the nomads try to find a sense of pride in the life they now lead, which is perhaps the greatest tragedy of contemporary America: that you have to resign yourself to the fact that poverty will be a part of your identity. Zhao and McDormand try to address a deeper layer by showing that there is much more going on beneath the surface of this new economic frontier. What “Nomadland” does a wonderful job of showing is that this layer only reveals itself if you look for it long and thoroughly enough.
“Nomadland” is a beautiful film, which understandably won big at the Oscars.

Rating: 4,5 / 5