Review: Nomadland

Frances McDormand plays Fern, who suffers a double tragedy; 1) Her husband dies, and 2) The small Nevada town she lives in essentially closes down due to the foreclosure of the all-important local gypsum plant. Fern decides to pack up and head for the open road with her van as her new home. When running into the daughter of a friend she insists she’s not homeless but ‘houseless’. Along the way Fern gets seasonal work at Amazon and a few things here and there at campsites and the like. She also makes new acquaintances with other ‘nomads’ like her, mostly temporary connections. David Strathairn plays one such acquaintance, and some real-life ‘nomads’ play a version of themselves.

 

The winner of the Best Picture Academy Award, this 2020 film from writer-director Chloe Zhao (who also won Best Director) is a great vehicle for Frances McDormand, who deservingly won Best Actress. Given that many of the people McDormand interacts with aren’t professional actors, you might think it’s a given that McDormand would be the whole show here. And she is to some extent. However, I actually think most of the non-actors acquit themselves quite well opposite her and don’t seem like it’s their first film, necessarily. That is to say that the seams don’t show too often in what is ultimately not a documentary. Yes, McDormand is interacting with these people who tell their real-life stories, but she’s doing so as the character, not as Frances McDormand, so it’s not really a documentary as such. She’s putting on a performance, in what is mostly a reactionary role, listening to their stories, but as the character. McDormand has you seeing Fern, the character not McDormand the actress within about five minutes. It’s a really fascinating idea, I think and it’s quite a genius performance from McDormand when you think about it. You can argue that the illusion is shattered a bit when David Strathairn turns up. However, he’s an easy sell in the part, he’s recognisable to me but might not be to others. He has an ordinary, everyman quality that allows him to blend in and just play the character. The fact that he doesn’t really stand out much in the film might actually be kind of brilliant on his part.

 

Still, I was a bit wary heading into this, suspecting McDormand might be playing a female Chris McCandless from “Into the Wild”, and those of you who read my review of that film know I was not on that man’s wavelength at all. He seemed like a reckless idiot who was the architect of his own demise, sad or not. Well, I’m happy to report that McDormand’s Fern isn’t just some dopey hippy who threw away all of her personal identification to go ‘find’ herself. She has been fucked over by the economy, which essentially forced the closure of the one big employment opportunity in her small town. Now she’s able to get occasional employment elsewhere, but has no house to live in, having to sell it. Call me naïve, but I found it incredible and horrifying that a whole town could be essentially wiped out and the people forced to relocate because of one place of business closing down.

 

My only real issue with the film is that I think it needed a more judicious editor. I think the producer-writer-director-editor was a tad too in love with every scene that she had shot. Some of the back half of the film does tend to drag on a touch. It’s a small film, and not really a great one. However it is a good one with lots of authenticity and a truly great Frances McDormand performance at the centre. Beautiful scenery, too.

 

Rating: B-