Film Review: Nomadland

Of Loss and Renewal

What does a woman do after she’s lost everything?

Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” (which plays at South Bay Drive-in Theater on Feb. 19, when it also opens on Hulu) introduces us to Fern (Frances McDormand), who loses her job to economic collapse and her husband to cancer and finds herself a “surplus worker.”

How to deal with that? She doesn’t sit around complaining. She packs her van, takes off and winds up in a parking lot with lots of other van dwellers. Some of them are voluntary nomads and consider it a lifestyle. Most of them are piece workers who move from place to place, depending on where the jobs are. Fern meets several, hears their stories and decides that she’ll try it too.

“Nomadland” – based on a book by Jessica Bruder, a journalist who did exactly what Fern does – is the fascinating result. Zhao wrote the script, editing along the way as situations changed. McDormand actually signed on as one of the producers, not thinking of acting until Zhao suggested it.

It’s a strange way to make a movie, but Zhao (“Songs My Brother Taught Me,” “The Rider”) has such an eye and ear for what will work that the results are excellent.

Geographically, the film begins in the South Dakota Badlands, goes through Deadwood, Nebraska to Western Nebraska for the beet harvest. Then to Empire, Nevada (gypsum mines until it was obliterated by the Great Recession and everyone got evicted). Then Punta Arena in Mendocino County, then Yuma, then back to San Bernardino County

McDormand, always a pleasure to watch, is utterly convincing, even when working alongside her colleagues – at an Amazon fulfillment center, a sugar beet harvesting plant, in the cafeteria of a tourist attraction and as a camp host in a national park.

“Nomadland” is all the better for the presence of three real nomads – Linda Mae, Swankie and Bob Wells. They value the temporary nature of the work and the freedom of knowing that soon enough, they will be on their way to another place.

Fern, meanwhile, has learned both self-reliance and working together, but mostly gains an appreciation of how to live with nature.