Nomadland Is a Moving Depiction of a Migratory Life

Nomadland, based on Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book of the same name, stars Frances McDormand as Fern, the former resident of a rural company town in Nevada. Fern is dealing with the death of her husband, the loss of her livelihood, and the dwindling of her community due to the recent shutdown of the sheetrock plant in her town. Early in the movie, a teenager asks her whether she’s homeless. “No,” Fern answers. “I’m just . . . houseless.”

Fern lives in a van named Vanguard, to which she’s made extensive modifications to make life on the road a little easier. At Nomadland’s opening she’s a seasonal worker in an Amazon warehouse, but the movie follows her through a year of travels across the American West, following work, friends, and her own drive for exploration.

Fern on the road. Searchlight Pictures

This is no whimsical ode to wanderlust, nor is it a condescending moral lesson about poverty or a glorification of gritty “self-reliance.” It’s what filmmaker Chloé Zhao does best—a deeply empathetic story about people and place. Her style is naturalistic and personal, and she typically uses only a couple of professional actors per project, preferring to populate the majority of her films with real people from the communities she’s depicting. Her previous films, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) and The Rider (2017), both take place on the Pine Ridge Reservation and explore themes of community, masculinity, and economic struggle.

Summarizing the beats of Fern’s journey here would defeat the purpose, but it’s important to note that the movie takes place in 2012 and is in part about the ripple effects of the 2008 economic collapse on working-class people. Many of Fern’s fellow travelers are in their 70s and 80s and have taken to the road at least in part due to the loss of financial safety nets in a collapse that disproportionately affected people who were already economically disadvantaged. And yet multiple things are true about Fern’s life and the lives of many other nomads: it is a brutal economic necessity, but it also appeals to the parts of her personality that enjoy adventure and meeting interesting people. McDormand’s performance and Zhao’s writing and direction encourage that depth and engagement with all of Fern.

Linda May and Frances McDormand in Nomadland. Searchlight Pictures

Some of the most moving parts of the movie take place at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (RTR), a real yearly weekendlong gathering of nomads who occupy everything from RVs to small cars. It’s a time to share advice, swap supplies, and just connect, organized by a white-bearded man named Bob Wells. When Fern arrives, Bob is giving a speech about how American capitalism grinds down workers and the need for radical mutual aid. That’s his purpose in organizing the RTR—to facilitate the community and resources the nomads are often lacking. “My goal is to get the lifeboats out and get as many people into the lifeboats as I can,” he concludes, just before the movie shifts into a fireside gathering of campers sharing stories of how and why they came into this life.

Bob Wells as himself. Searchlight Pictures

The movie is at its best when it sticks close to these nonactors, both in group scenes like the RTR and in the more personal connections Fern has with Linda May and Swankie, two nomads who were also interviewed in Bruder’s book. The “actoriness” that creeps into some of McDormand’s solo scenes melts away here, and a lecture Swankie gives Fern about taking the stakes of nomadic life seriously doubles as a reminder to the audience not to get caught up in the parts that look fun. Wilfred Chan has written a piece for Vulture about the ethical problem that lies in the distance from these experiences that focusing on McDormand’s fictional character demands, and—McDormand’s undeniable skill as an actor aside—the movie does lose steam whenever her travels distance her from the real people who make up the majority of the supporting cast. Similarly, David Strathairn’s performance is personable and well characterized, but his presence in the movie is a bit distracting. His character, “Dave,” is a drifter with a crush on Fern, and the way their paths cross repeatedly throughout her travels feels more like engineered narrative convention than the organic progression the rest of the movie aims for, and at which Zhao’s other movies excel.

Fern and Dave. Searchlight Pictures

Though Zhao is most commonly referred to as a director, that title feels woefully incomplete considering the scope of her role in the movies she makes. She’s credited as Nomadland’s director, writer, and editor, which was also the case for Songs My Brothers Taught Me; it was partially the case for The Rider, which she wrote and directed. Though her films certainly reflect an individual style, part of that style is a rejection of the controlling overbearance often associated with auteurs. Collaboration, patience, and a deep interest in real people’s lives mark her projects, as does her and cinematographer Joshua James Richards’s breathtaking way of shooting the land, communicating awe without fetishization and drawing attention to its beauty without pulling attention away from the characters themselves.

Searchlight Pictures

Zhao’s next film is a dramatic departure from Nomadland and its predecessors: Marvel’s Eternals, a defining step into Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though I’m excited to see how her emotionally resonant storytelling and striking visual style translate to a big-budget superhero movie, Nomadland has me already anticipating her return to the grounded portrayals of real lives that rarely get the attention or compassion they deserve.

Nomadland is streaming now on Hulu.