Nomadland

So, I watched this last night.

Short version: It probably should have been a documentary.

I mean – it almost is. Except for a few professional actors, including of course Frances McDormond (and the wonderful, unassuming David Strathairn – long a favorite of mine), most of the people you see onscreen are actual “nomads,” some featured in the non-fiction book that inspired the film.

It’s the story of Fern (McDormand), who lived in a Nevada town that essentially disappeared from the map when the gypsum plant at its center shut down. Then her husband died. So she’s on the road in her van, taking temporary jobs, beginning with an Amazon facility.

(And, by the way, this is a thing – Amazon Camperforce)

At Amazon, she meets Linda May, who encourages to meet up with her and others down in Arizona at a “Rubber Tramp Rendezvous)

(Also real, as is the story of its leader, Bob Wells.)

Here’s what I liked: the elements that centered on the characters played by real campers. The scenery, some of which was startlingly familiar to me, as a chunk of it takes place in the South Dakota Badlands and Wall Drug. Been there!

Here’s what didn’t grab me – the Fern story, which, you know, considering she’s the main character, is a problem.

I didn’t dislike it. It didn’t strike me as absurd or wrong. Just almost unnecessary, almost in an insulting kind of way, as in: The stories of these real people aren’t affecting or interesting enough, so we’ll put Frances McDormond in it, studying the distance thoughtfully and floating nude in a creek.

I hasten to say – she’s wonderful. Love Frances McDormond. But as a throughline to the piece – that is, her motivations for hitting the road and not settling back down – are not strongly enough articulated to shape the film but present enough to come across as almost a distraction. I mean, I came out of it not at all interested in what Fern does now, and very much interested in Linda May’s eco-friendly house in the Arizona desert, what happened to Swankie, and more of the bits and pieces of the stories we hear along the way.

And I’ll also say this: I went into the film excepting it to be a critique: a critique of an economic system that can allow companies to let communities collapse, as happened in Empire, Nevada, a critique of companies like Amazon that see workers as nothing more than commodities, and of a system that lacks a strong safety net for those in this situation.

Perhaps that’s part of the book – I don’t know – but the movie doesn’t present that kind of critique at all, which may make you like it more or less, but it did surprise me.

For the primary takeaway about all these nomads is that this life is definitely something they’re choosing. They may have limited choices otherwise, but they’re not presented as miserable or unhappy – in fact, it’s the opposite. They’re free in a way most of the rest of us aren’t.

Which then takes us back to Fern and I suppose the clearest point to take from the film. She may not have had many choices at the beginning of this stage in her life – husband gone, community, home and jobs there gone – but in the end, she does seem to choose. She chooses to definitively leave the past behind her, to let go, and to re-enter life as a nomad – perhaps literally (we don’t know), but definitely metaphorically. To understand, that we have some choices in life, some things are given, but here we are, in the present, meeting people and seeing things. We don’t have complete control over what happens to us, but what else do we have to do, nomads on this earth that we are, but to engage with the present moment and…keep going?