Review: Nomadland
A reality mixed with fiction has become Chloe Zhao’s signature creative flourish. She explored the technique in The Rider (the film that put her on everyone’s radar) when she followed a real-life bull rider suffering a head injury and was wrestling with the fallout. This mix of documentary and narrative fiction gives Zhao’s films a lived-in feeling, blurring the lines between a cinematic experience and a genuine telling of someone’s life story.
This style has served Zhao well and the same is true about her most recent film, Nomadland, which tells the story about an actual town in Nevada that falls apart after the government shuts down the factory that served as the main source of jobs in the town. The government even went as far as discontinuing the town’s zip code - leaving residents displaced and disillusioned.
We’re given a glimpse into one such story in Fern (played by Frances McDormand). Fern is a widow who moves from one odd job to the next, living in her van. While the film is mainly concerned with Fern and her life as a nomad, we’re also meant to experience a broader community that makes up the fabric, albeit a well-hidden pattern, of many American’s experience. Fern represents a type of person who is no longer served by a system that’s meant to protect her in the last years of her life.
This is part of what makes Zhao’s uniquely authentic style that much more impactful - she features non-actors in the film, telling their real stories, inviting us into their real struggles and joys. For Fern, it’s her grief over her husband’s death. She’s a fascinatingly complex character in the way she was written by Zhao and portrayed by McDormand - she’s likeable but not overly friendly, vulnerable, (in some ways out of necessity) but keeps people at arms length.
While many of the nomads we meet are living that way out of necessity and desperation, some seem to choose to live their lives on the road, if nothing else, because they are weary of fighting the same battles and losing. Zhao introduces us to a whole community of people that may otherwise be forgotten, which is one of the beautiful functions of cinema.