It’s hard to know exactly why some films carry so much buzz long before they ever make the rounds. This one continued to pick up steam as it made its way through the festival circuit over the last quarter of 2020 before finding its streaming distribution home on Hulu. Nomadland is an uplifting story of perseverance that balances imaginative wanderlust with personal catharsis in the semi-modern American West.
When a woman in her 60s loses her husband, her job, and her house in the wake of 2008’s Great Recession, she packs her life into a van and begins her journey as a contemporary nomad. Stripped of the many of the comforts of her former life, Fern takes whatever seasonal work she can find along the way. Through self-exploration, she discovers that her adventure is about living, not just making a living.
I can see why writer/director Chloé Zhao has become the most awarded filmmaker in a single awards season and is the new darling of indie cinema. It’s also no secret that awards season is political. Her film, based on Jessica Bruder’s book, is exquisitely shot and beautifully told, even though its pacing is a bit slow. Its message of personal strength in the face of adversity coupled with the healing power of nature is heart-warming. However, in the pursuit of crafting a narrative of empowerment and freedom through this nomadic lifestyle, she romanticizes the exploitation of gig labor among these vulnerable seniors and doesn’t accurately represent the realities of the people in the source material.
There’s a very observant Vulture article that goes into great detail about what Zhao omitted from Bruder’s book in order to paint the narrative of her fictional lead character and how that sells the subjects short. Many of the real-life nomads that were part of the book also had roles playing ‘themselves’ in Zhao’s hybrid drama-documentary style, but their stories aren’t the ones really being told in Zhao’s work.
Frances McDormand’s performance is outstanding and she was the one who recruited Zhao to adapt this story. Her portrayal is brave, ambitious, and rough while still maintaining fragility. It’s also important to recognize that it’s fiction. Fern loves her gig job at an Amazon warehouse and McDormand actually facilitated access by directly contacting an executive at the company. I doubt Amazon would have been on board to allow filming inside one of their massive distribution centers if they were going to be cast in a negative light. The problem is that the experiences of those in Bruder’s book weren’t wholly reflected in McDormand’s character.
Linda May, one of the real-life nomads from the book, has a decent-sized role in the film but she’s also required to portray the exact opposite of her experience with Amazon on camera. In the book, she says she hated the job and likened it to slave labor. In the film, it’s all smiles and a happy work environment. Fern even refers to the pay as “great money”. In this exchange of the book’s truth, Zhao casts aside the harsh reality of its subjects’ gig labor experiences in order to exalt the story of her fictional lead.
I get it. Zhao isn’t a documentarian, although some of those filmmaking techniques are apparent in her work. Crafting a story that values personal freedom and exploration is a much more palatable sales pitch than a film about the corporate exploitation of the nomadic elderly through a system of gig labor. It’s just not as interesting or as true. It seems like Zhao wanted the authenticity of the nomadic lifestyle to work functionally for her narrative rather than depicting the entirety of the reality with the character’s journey through those negative experiences, and that’s a bit unfortunate.
Clearly, the movie has been well received within the industry, holding a ridiculous 94 score on Metacritic. It’s definitely an Oscar-bait kind of film, but that shouldn’t detract from its actual quality. Joshua James Richards’ cinematography is stellar, McDormand’s performance is compelling, and Zhao’s direction gives life, love, and sympathy to a vulnerable and overlooked group of people.
Recommendation: Delicately told with a powerful lead performance from McDormand, it’s a wonderful piece of contemporary filmmaking but warrants a larger conversation about what was omitted. If you like plot-driven films, this probably isn’t for you.