Nomadland
“Nomadland presents older characters, many living with disabilities, unvarnished but with endless empathy.”
Title: Nomadland (2020)
Director: Chloé Zhao 👩🏻🇨🇳🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Chloé Zhao 👩🏻🇨🇳🇺🇸 based on the book by Jessica Bruder 👩🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 4.5/5
If you’ve seen Chloé Zhao’s American westerns Songs My Brother Taught Me (2015) or The Rider (2018), you’ll instantly recognize her fingerprints on Nomadland which recently won the audience award at Toronto International Film Festival. Attributes like lyrical cinematography by Joshua James Richards, an intimate spotlight on a marginalized community, and a palpable love for the land all suffuse Zhao’s spiritual trilogy.
Conceived in partnership with Frances McDormand, who had already optioned Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, McDormand and Zhao had to produce their film on the downlow. Potential conflict sat between rival distributors of Nomadland and Zhao’s upcoming Marvel film, Eternals. But their team worked quickly, living out of a van for four months, and eventually the stars aligned for the film to debut at Venice Film Festival where critics soundly embraced it.
With Zhao’s signature ability to connect with non-professional actors, and to tease out the most honest of human emotions by cleverly employing the freeing device of “fiction”, Nomadland sheds light on transient communities. The film moves like rolled clay, capturing imprints of the many lives that touch the screen. In parallel, McDormand’s character Fern undergoes an internal journey that provides the film’s backbone. Scenery and characters rotate with the naturalism of seasons, feeling familiar by the film’s end.
This repetition could prove a sticking point for some viewers—that nothing really “happens.” But behind Fern’s quiet bravery in facing her own past, her transformation fulfills the emotional highs and lows that mark any good story. It just takes a little patience to get there.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
Nomadland centers women, plain and simple. Featuring people like protagonist Fern or key characters of fellow part-timer Linda (Linda May), or longtime nomad Swankie (as herself), the film trounces the Bechdel Test. And if you have the pleasure of seeing this in an actual theatre, Zhao hammers home the point by scaling up the faces of women from floor-to-ceiling height and fixates on their subtle expressions for long stretches at a time.
The female gaze asserts itself through narrative framework as well. Repeated cycles recall the gravity of tidal waves: Viewers go back with Fern to the Amazon warehouse where the story starts; we revisit the Arizona camp where she met Swankie; and return to the original crossroads of her decision to live nomadically. This isn’t a masculine hero arc; Fern doesn’t strike out to conquer enemies and achieve greatness. All her demon-slaying takes place internally.
In addition, Nomadland sings when it explores platonic love between women. Both Linda and Swankie foster Fern’s development with no strings attached. Fern’s sister Dolly (Melissa Smith) tries and clearly loves her deeply, but doesn’t “get” her nomadic lifestyle and can only prescribe mainstream attachments—the house, the husband, the job—as the path to happiness. It’s wonderful to see a variety of realistic women who each add to Fern’s life in different ways.
The primary male figure, Dave (David Strathairn), does enter as a love interest. He provides narrative tension as Fern must decide what path is right for her. But he exists solely as another influence, rather than the catalyst or transformative agent that so many films hinge upon the presence of a man in a woman’s life.
Race: 2/5
Nomadland automatically employs a non-white lens by virtue of Zhao, who was born in Beijing and moved to the United States in high school. But onscreen, you’d never guess it.
Her camera quietly observes an older community that is nearly all white. One Black woman appears at the Arizona campsite and shares her backstory, while other non-white individuals silently pepper backdrops. None of this feels out of place, and for such an observational approach to filmmaking, it’s hard to ask for the interjection of more characters of color when knowing that Zhao and producers, including longtime collaborator Mollye Asher, sourced local talent on the spot.
All that said, it breaks my heart to hear that while Zhao didn’t encounter “any kind of racism or bias during the time [she] spent on the road,” she isn’t so sure that would be the case had she filmed Nomadland during the anti-Asian environment of coronavirus. It feels like an ongoing slight that white communities are given the deepest levels of humanization in media, while people of color remain offscreen and possibly marginalized by the very individuals Zhao works so hard to stump for.
Bonus for Age: +1.00
McDormand commands the screen through roles that defy stereotypes of a woman over 60. But in Nomadland, it’s not just McDormand’s Fern: Key figures like Linda, Swankie, and Dave belong almost entirely to an older demographic. For a media landscape that still underrepresents people over 60, and whose scant representations skew almost 75% male, Nomadland defiantly bucks the trend.
Along with age come authentic stories as we see characters battle cancer or contemplate their lives with decades of hindsight. Zhao presents them unvarnished but with endless empathy.
Bonus for Disability: +1.00
From everyday inclusions of disability, such as our introduction to Swankie with her arm in a sling or the moment around a fire pit as a Vietnam veteran cites post-traumatic stress disorder as his reason for living on the road, Nomadland renders disability with matter-of-fact realism. Sickness or issues of mental health live alongside most of the characters we meet, in fact, but never do we find their identities narrowed down to single-faceted markers.
Mediaversity Grade: A- 4.50/5
Nomadland falls into all the trappings of a film festival darling. The pacing can feel ruminative, magic hour lighting gives way to bursts of minimalist beauty, and the film homes in on the human condition, complete with close-ups on lined faces and eyes that have clearly seen some shit.
But this isn’t to say the film lacks humor. Sly editing and the inherent quirkiness of Nomadland’s non-actors bring levity. A flock of hens with beautiful plumage jump cuts to a steaming roast chicken on a dinner table. At a zoo, Fern playfully squeals and hides her face in Dave’s arm during the feeding time of raw meat to alligators before the camera lords over still-pink steaks sizzling on a grill.
The theme recurs: Nothing in life should be treated preciously, kept in a box and out of the light. Rather, Nomadland implores us to take things out of their bubble wrap and enjoy them while they last, whether objects or memories or people. And when these things inevitably give out, celebrate and move on with your head held high and eyes on the horizon.
Like Nomadland? Try these other slices of Americana.
The Rider (2018)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Savage State (2020)