Cinema has given us many road movies throughout its history, however to include Nomadland (2020) in the categories falls short of the impressive and current theme it deals with. Because it is much more than that, although it is by definition. The film directed by Chloé Zhao is so layered that the journey of its protagonist, Fern, played by Frances McDormand, is just the excuse to tell different personal stories and certainly a more global drama.
After losing her job during the economic crisis of 2008 and suffering the death of her husband a few years earlier, Fern decides to sell almost all her belongings, buy an RV and travel across the United States. On her way she meets many people, has multiple jobs and also multiple complications. It is not clear, at least at first, whether the protagonist cannot and/or does not want to settle down in a house. The journey begins to be a necessity not only for her, but also for the people she meets in the different camps she visits. Each and everyone with a particular story. Traveling becomes a kind of therapy to heal a trauma or a loss, to make the most of lost time or simply to leave behind something that needs to be overcome, but never forgotten.
In Nomadland the search for an adventure does not exist. That, among other things, because of its marked documentary character, which is reflected not only in the way Zhao records with his camera, which constantly accompanies Fern, but also in the very circumstances of the filming. Several of the characters that appear, among them the famous Bob Wells, are true nomads who set out to travel their country by their own means. They are not actors or actresses, that's their life. And Frances McDormand lives it all with them. The jobs she has are real, she fixed up her trailer herself and even some of the people she knows don't know she's an actress. This only confirms something that by now is no longer a surprise: Frances McDormand is one of the best actresses Hollywood has today. For her acting ability, adaptability and versatility.
Thus, Frances leads a story that reveals a perhaps unknown side of the United States, but that could well happen in many other geographies. People who, faced with the impossibility of working, decide to find their own way in the face of a system that constantly judges them. Almost at the beginning a girl asks Fern: "My mom says you are homeless, is that true?", and she answers: "No, I am not homeless. I just don't have a home. It's not the same thing, is it?" In the end, home is what matters. And that she builds herself, without needing a physical place.
Complications arise when her only essential material, her mobile home, breaks down and she must ask her sister, who ironically is married to a real estate agent, for money to pay for the fix. She then visits Dave, another friend she meets at the RV camps. He, with a grandchild on the way, decides to settle down in a house with his family, but Fern doesn't like that life.
Even at her age, people judge her, offering her an early retirement because of the difficulty of finding work. But the people she meets, among them two ladies she meets regularly, end up teaching her more than she thinks. They are people who are left behind, sometimes in a literal sense, but who in these circumstances remain in her memory.
Based on the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, written by American journalist Jessica Bruder, the film tells with great simplicity but great technical quality the story of a woman who, after all, returns to the place she left behind after several unfortunate events: her home in Empire, Nevada.
In a difficult year for cinema, Nomadland has already won several awards at various festivals, and accumulated six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. But no matter how many nominations it received and may win, it is undoubtedly one of the great films of 2020. It is worth waiting to see it on the big screen, so we can get a little closer to that nomadic life, if only for a while.
