Nomadland

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Roger Ebert has famously called movies “empathy machines,” and he would have love this one. It starts with a brief blurb that US Gypsum shut its doors in 2011; six months later, the town of Empire, Nevada ceased to exist, and the post office decommissioned its zip code. This is entirely true. Our story picks up just after that and right before New Year’s Eve 2011. We follow its meanderings until just after New Year’s Eve of 2012. During that time, we travel with “Fern” as she moves around the country following seasonal jobs, along with a group of migrant Americans who call themselves rubber hoboes because they travel the country and live in their vans. What makes this film so fascinating is that it is neither a normal narrative drama, nor is it a documentary. Rather, it’s a strange hybrid of both. For most of the film, the only paid actor is Frances McDormand, playing “Fern” while living with real people being themselves. From what I read, most of them did not know she was acting, and the conversations that were captured were unscripted and totally real. The film is at its best, and nothing short of revelatory, when McDormand is interacting with these people as “Fern.” Their conversations are so genuine, funny, tough, sad, heartwarming, and often deeply moving. I will remember Swankie’s story of the swallows for a long time. The film lost some of its momentum when “Fern” went to visit the family of her road friend “Dave” (played by David Strathairn, whose real-life son plays his son in the film). There just was not the same power and energy in those scripted, acted scenes. I understand the need for them and what they tell us about “Fern” as a character, but I was happy to see her on the road again. Toward the end, there is a very moving scene between her and real-life hobo Bob in which she talks about her husband. So much of who “Fern” is as a person is established in that conversation. We really see McDormand’s skill as an actor here, as she seamlessly creates her character in a real-time conversation with a real man sharing about his son. I found it so moving to watch. I felt many things in this film, but perhaps a sense of wonder most acutely. I was given the privilege to see a world I knew nothing about. These people have chosen to live lives utterly different from my own. I do not understand what pulls them, and could never do it myself. But I was moved to see the world through their eyes for just a brief window in time.