“Nomadland” (2020)
Heart breaking study of life after death.
Heart breaking study of life after death.
I originally watched Nomadland shortly after it’s initial release purely on the strength of its quirky title and my unabashed cinematic love for Frances McDormand. I wasn’t expecting it to be break my heart, and it did so all over again recently. Here’s the opening 15 minutes of this 107 minute multi Oscar winner:
Without any opening credits, the film opens with this slowly revealed crawl
“On January 31st, 2011, due to a reduced demand for sheetrock, US Gypsum shut down its plant in Empire, Nevada, after 88 years
By July, the Empire zip code, 89405, was discontinued”.
Short haired and wrapped in multiple layers against the biting winter and snow all around her, “Fern” (Frances McDormand) sifts through old boxes in a garage doubling for storage before carrying them one by one to her mini-van nearby. She returns and stops on one box in particular, sifting through it before tenderly grabbing an old jumper and lovingly sniffing and cradling it as she gently begins to sob. We cut to Fern now paying the owner of the storage facility before giving him a long and lingering heartfelt embrace before we cut again to a bright if snowy and cold looking day, and the long and winding roads ahead for Fern and her white/grey mini-van. A quick cut now sees Fern with her trousers around her ankles unceremoniously urinating in a bleak, cold, frost and snow covered field.
There is nothing or no-one for miles around. Cut to simple opening credit:
“Nomadland”
We return to find Fern now driving at night and seemingly singing a biblical hymn to keep herself awake and more importantly, arguably, to raise her spirits as she approaches a RV park. “I’m on the Amazon Camper force List” she confirms to a befuddled receptionist and we cut soon after to Fern now safely ensconced and inside her parked mini-van. Drawing a partition to separate her cramped sleeping quarters from the usual drivers compartment, she cooks pasta on a small cooking stove against a single dull light illuminating the van. Tired and weary, Fern now sleeps against the backdrop of another light, a small plastic illuminated Father Christmas in the corner of the tight and cramped quarters doubling for a bedroom.
The following morning we find Fern working as a packer in a huge industrial sized Amazon warehouse before quickly cutting to “Linda” (Linda May) introducing Fern to her new colleagues around a lunch table. The brief introductions are full of laughter and tales, however Fern smiles politely yet barely says a word. Quick cuts follow as first Fern trudges through the cold and snow to the on-site launderette before sitting around a table and helping Linda May with a jigsaw puzzle as they wait for their laundry before a further simple cut now finds the two ladies in Fern’s mini-van with Linda May dishing out day to day practicalities for travelling life in a mini-van whilst Fern retorts with memories of her deceased husband and the name of her mini-van, “Vanguard”.
The following day sees a quick cut away from the monotony and perhaps anonymity of work inside a ginormous industrial warehouse to Fern sitting quietly in a large local sporting goods and all purpose store. As she’s innocently lost in her own thoughts and seemingly melancholic, she’s approached first by “Brandy” (Brandy Wilber) and “Makenzie” (Makenzie Etcheverry) who exclaim “Mrs M!” excitedly before their mother “Karie” (Karie Lynn McDermott Wilder) embraces Fern and following an awkward exchange offers her a place to stay. “Don’t worry about me” replies Fern with a smile but seconds later, after Makenzie has recited a poem she clearly learned under the schooling and tutelage of Fern, there is an even bigger, prouder and wider genuine smile. Returning to her mini-van later at night, we now find Fern fiddling with an aerial to an old radio before she finds a station playing Christmas Carols and she resumes folding her dry clothes absent mindedly. A further cut now finds Linda May talking honestly and earnestly about feeling suicidal after finding her lifetime of work is worth just $550.00 per month social security. “I’d worked since I was 12 years old” she laments before proudly stating she’d raised her family too and, after seeing an advertisement for a “RV Bootcamp”, she decided to attend and live on the road from thereon in.
The following day sees a final day of seasonal work inside the Amazon factory followed by a seemingly unwell, cold and sneezing Fern inside her mini-van shivering yet also wearing a tiara in celebration of a Christmas Day happening outside her van in the shape of the faint sound of faraway fireworks. Scraping ice from the windscreen of her mini-van the following morning, Fern encounters a whining stray dog before an awkward conversation follows with the receptionist of the RV Park. With no work and a steep increase in the park fees now that Amazon aren’t subsidising her stay, Fern has no option but to seek warmer climes for the winter and seasonal work elsewhere. Leaving the office, the camera follows Fern as she gently and almost apologetically taps the head of the stray dog as she walks off camera to the right. The camera lingers on the simple “Office” sign, the stray dog, and the simple and stark bleakness that encompasses the entire opening 15 minutes of the film.
“Fern” (Frances McDormand) After working her entire life in administration and latterly as a teacher at a local school, Fern is bereft, melancholic, grieving her deceased husband of a lifetime and now fiercely and stoically independent. Friends within the “tribe” or “travelling community” come and go such as Linda May noted above or particularly the cantankerous yet sweet natured soul that is “Swankie” (Charlene Swankie) as well as “Dave” (David Strathairn). Being the huge fan of David Strathairn that I am, it pleases me greatly to see such a full and well rounded role for him here and a character who only has eyes for Fern and she knows it, but her eyes are looking in a different direction and for very different and personal reasons. We see life through Fern’s eyes, the adaption to life lived constantly on the road or on the move, the pitfalls and costs to keep “where I live” maintained and moving, from one back breaking seasonal job to the next as well as the deep, mournful and lonely ruminations on what and how to fill and spend her days when not working or travelling.
Frances McDormand would win an Academy Award in 2021 for her incredible portrayal here of melancholy, grief, loss and not just the death of a lifetime companion but the death of her hometown and the only life she’s ever known. In the same year, McDormand would also be awarded a second Oscar as part of the producing team that saw Nomadland win the prestigious “Best Motion Picture of the Year” award and now has four golden statuettes to her name following her standout performances in the gritty Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017 as well as her iconic performance in the Coen Brothers masterpiece Fargo in 1996.
The third of the film’s three Oscar wins (from six nominations) in 2021 fell to director Chloe Zhao and, prestigious again, the “Best Achievement in Directing” category. Alongside Zhao and a huge cast of “Nomads” who agreed to reprise a role of themselves on screen, special kudos is also reserved, in spades, for the Oscar nominated cinematography of Joshua James Richards and the surprisingly not nominated musical score and original music of Ludovico Einaudi. The Italian’s musical compositions are mournful yarns from just a piano and violin, but boy do they brilliantly accompany Swankie’s story against a beautiful sunset, or Fern’s naked swim in a vast river or her clifftop walk in a windy storm. There’s also a beautiful piano accompaniment to a combination and quickly edited scene with Fern slowly walking through a deserted town at night before bumping into fellow travellers previously met and the reality of the arduous seasonal work of the following day.
Nomandland is incredibly melancholic, sad, heart breaking and triumphantly uplifting too. It’s a film of sunrises and sunsets, the dawning of a new day, a new adventure or a new place to mourn the loss of a husband, the stability of a way of life and even the very fabric of the country in which these very real life characters live.
Highly recommended.
“Dedicated to the ones who had to depart. See you on down the road”.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 100 blog articles (with 300+ individual film reviews) within my archives from which to choose:
“Limbo” (2020).
“It’s a good job God made dreaming for free”.medium.com
“Dune” (2021)
“This is only the beginning”medium.com
“Gold” (2022)
Dystopian Mad Max survival thriller without the thrills.medium.com