Nomadland (2021)
Directed by Chloé Zhao
A woman in her sixties embarks on a journey through the western United States after losing everything in the Great Recession, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
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This is all complimented by Zhao’s superbly understated direction, which refuses to draw much attention to itself at all beyond the odd gorgeous, lingering take, and perhaps a third-act homage to John Ford’s The Searchers (you’ll know it when you see it).
That one of the film’s final shots evokes the closing frames of John Ford’s The Searchers makes that abundantly clear.
Few actors can play determination as McDormand does—with unadorned stoicism—and by the close she has come to resemble those flinty, plain-spoken pioneer women familiar from classic westerns, or the men, like Ethan Edwards in “The Searchers,” who are fated to be alone.
In fact, you could well draw a line directly from the westerns of Ford to Nomadland — not Ford’s brawling, boastful westerns like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Fort Apache , but his reflective, uncertain works like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance .
Zhao’s flair for the open road recalls Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” (1969), while her magic-hour skies rival Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978), offering Fern as a successor to Jack Nicholson in “Five Easy Pieces” (1970) and Harry Dean Stanton in “Paris, Texas” (1984), a masterpiece so profound that it’s hard to put into words.
The same applies to Jack Nicholson, as Bobby Dupea, at the bitter end of “Five Easy Pieces” (1970), abandoning his girlfriend at the gas pumps, beside the Red Rooster Café, and hitching a ride on a logging truck—no wallet, no plans, not even a jacket, although, as the trucker says, where they’re headed will be colder than hell.
Like Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea in “Five Easy Pieces” (1970), she’s a loner and a leaver by nature, if not as cruel about it.
As a practically invasive character study, McDormand’s acting chops win out (following her somewhat random movement through life, like a modernized “Five Easy Pieces”); but as a complete picture, it’s largely lacking, even with a hint of a love story creeping up toward the finale.
It turns out that the film had less in common with “Grapes of Wrath” than it does with road movies like “Easy Rider” or “Five Easy Pieces”.
Zhao’s flair for the open road recalls Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” (1969), while her magic-hour skies rival Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978), offering Fern as a successor to Jack Nicholson in “Five Easy Pieces” (1970) and Harry Dean Stanton in “Paris, Texas” (1984), a masterpiece so profound that it’s hard to put into words.
Instead, Nomadland plays as a cerebral character study, although not too focused on the state of mind to shy away from the beautiful scenery existing all around Fern. Zhao, once again, settles into a cinematic atmosphere that calls to mind Days of Heaven and other dreamlike scenery out of a Malick film or something as pure from that time period.
Nomadland wanders the same American landscape as Badlands , Days of Heaven , To the Wonder , and Knight of Cups , asking similar questions about being-in-the-world, human meaning-making, and what Walker Percy calls “the search” in his novel, The Moviegoer .
But it benefits from Zhao’s instinctive curiosity and identification with outsiders, reminiscent of French filmmaker Agnès Varda, who turned her empathetic camera on vagabonds and gleaners in her innovative docu-fiction features (the French title of “Vagabond,” which translates to “With no roof or rules,” could be a nomad mantra).
Agnes Varda’s 1985 Vagabond (Sans toi ni loi ) was about a female transient wandering the backroads of France.
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What I do know is that Zhao, like Kelly Reichardt (whose Wendy and Lucy is spiritual kin to this film), has a knack for gazing on the deeds of marginalized people with the greatest delicacy and empathy, without turning preachy or polemical.
It’s a character in these films — like Kelly Reichardt does with her penetrating work; see First Cow , Old Joy , Wendy and Lucy .
Fear not: “Nomadland” is still a real movie, with powerful bursts of anger and sorrow as Fern grows frustrated by her limited options and comes mighty close to exploiting the generosity around her. Though the spirit of Terrence Malick is prominent in Zhao’s lyrical style, “Nomadland” also calls to mind Ken Loach’s kitchen-sink realism for its depiction of lower-class angst clattering against the ambivalence of capitalism (consider the plight of the protagonist of “I, Daniel Blake”), not to mention Kelly Reichert’s visions of wayfaring loners (imagine Michelle Williams’ wanderer from “Wendy and Lucy,” all grown up and still no place to go).
Zhao’s flair for the open road recalls Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” (1969), while her magic-hour skies rival Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978), offering Fern as a successor to Jack Nicholson in “Five Easy Pieces” (1970) and Harry Dean Stanton in “Paris, Texas” (1984), a masterpiece so profound that it’s hard to put into words.
It turns out that the film had less in common with “Grapes of Wrath” than it does with road movies like “Easy Rider” or “Five Easy Pieces”.
Zhao is a spiritual descendent of another cinematic poet, Terrence Malick, and there are a handful of shots that look straight out of “The New World.”
An avowed admirer of Terrence Malick’s The New World—a lucid dream of American history—Zhao both equals and outdoes him with Nomadland, creating a portrait of America’s present that stands in sharp, unnerving contrast to its lofty promises.
On the other hand, its gentle survey of humanity reminds me of another unlikely Disney production, David Lynch's The Straight Story , which is no small compliment.
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There’s a scene in Nomadland so beautiful I gasped as it whisked my brain to some of Terrence Malick’s early work, Badlands and Day of Heaven .
Nomadland wanders the same American landscape as Badlands , Days of Heaven , To the Wonder , and Knight of Cups , asking similar questions about being-in-the-world, human meaning-making, and what Walker Percy calls “the search” in his novel, The Moviegoer .
In several ways, Nomadland successfully breaches the essence of personal spiritual awakening the adaptation of Wild (2014) was desperate to achieve, another expose focused on a woman walking through perseverant isolation to reclaim herself.
From Janet Leigh in Psycho to Tom Hanks in Cast Away to Reese Witherspoon in Wild , the reason a certain character ends up by herself or himself can vary, but they almost always feature that character doing some deep soul-searching, trying to account for what got her or him to that particular point in life.