Movie Review: Nomadland

There's a lot to admire about Chloe Zhao's Nomadland-which is currently the projected Best Picture frontrunner at this year's Oscars. Zhao continues her tradition of making films that showcase people that exist in the forgotten fringes of American culture with a story that centers on modern day nomads-who live out of vans while traveling through the wide open areas of the south/midwestern United States. Zhao treats their way of living and the reason they chose to embrace a solitary lifestyle where everything from employment to the people their surrounded by is in a constant state of flux with the utmost empathy and compassion and there's enough skillfully crafted shots of the beautiful landscapes of Nevada, Arizona and South Dakota throughout the journey to fill thousands of postcards or editions of National Geographic. However, simply respectfully portraying a subculture most people aren't even aware exists isn't enough to make Nomadland work as a piece of cinema and courtesy of its mundane, philosophically-conflicted approach to storytelling that crushes its odds of making an emotional impact, fails to be a compelling product.

At the start, Nomadland feels like its onto something. Zhao confidently introduces Fern (Frances McDormand)-a widow who turned to the nomad lifestyle shortly after the textile plant she worked at in rural Nevada shut down and the company-owned home she shared with her late husband was repossessed- and lays down the framework for an insightful character study at the jump  By the 25 minute mark, Fern has been shown selling belongings from out of a shortage unit she keeps to make money, working a seasonal holiday gig at an Amazon warehouse, running into a family she knows who questions why she's living in a van, bonds with people at the van park she's staying at and hits the road. Detailing her experiences in such a raw manner provides a look at how she's how able to survive and the type of harsh judgement she receives from people who knew her when they lived a more traditional life over their decision to embrace-which establishes what seems like the type of human hook needed to ground a story in reality (or at least something that it feels like it). 

With each subsequent location Fern travels to, Nomadland becomes less and less appealing. Mental fatigue started to sit in during the second and third cycles of Fern working a shitty temporary job/shooting the breeze with her neighbors at the location where her van is parked/occasionally taking about life come into play and once that "day in the life of a drifter" act reaches the fourth or fifth go-round without any additional significant insight about the character or the lifestyle, the end credits couldn't possibly come soon enough. While character studies are designed to be an episodic telling of the protagonist's life, watching the monotony and mindless repetition of a daily routine take place on screen gives Nomadland a taxing feeling that should never creep into any piece of act regardless of subject matter or genre.

It also doesn't help that by blending real life nomads with fictional characters, the movie is constantly at odds itself when it comes to its goal of authentically capturing the nomad lifestyle-particularly in the final act when Fern is forced to reconnect with her sister (Melissa Smith) and decides to visit an old friend (veteran character actor David Strathairn) from the road whose re-settled into a domestic life. McDormand is a  titan of an actor and she does great work once again here that is unquestionable made better by her method approach of living in a van during filming, but she can't compete with real people who've spent years, if not decades living in this world talking about what drew them to the lifestyle, their experiences on the road, etc. Every shift from the people who have the grit, bravery and survival skills to spend their lives on the road to the actors who walked away from it forever once production wrapped cheapens Zhao's desire to make a docu-style drama by adding a layer of fictionalized drama that will never ring true when its asked to appear next to the real thing. Zhao once again employing the "dramatize a real life story with the people who lived it" approach she took with her previous film The Rider would've almost certainly led to a more realistic and emotionally resonate film, but since she didn't go that route, Nomadland will just go down as a well-intentioned miscalculation on her seemingly very likely ascent to the top of her field.       

Grade: C