Nomadland

There is a part of our society that mostly goes unseen and unnoticed. While they technically are homeless they don’t consider themselves that way. Their home is their vehicle and they travel all over the country taking seasonal work before moving on to another location and doing it all over again. Some are immigrants but not all. Some are just people whom circumstances have placed them in this position and now this is the way they choose to life their lives. They call themselves nomads and they have their own sort of community and way of life that most others cannot fathom, yet it exists. Nomadland takes a look at this lifestyle as well as several of the reasons why someone would adopt it, even come to embrace it and choose not to come back to what the rest of society would consider normal. 

Jessica Bruder is an American Journalist who penned the nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. It explores the phenomenon of older Americans dealing with the Great Recession from 2007-2009 by adopting a transient lifestyle and traveling around the country in search of seasonal work. The book was a critical hit and was adapted into a documentary short film, CamperForce in 2017. This seventeen-minute short film takes a look at Amazon and their program they rolled out in the mid-2000’s, right around the time of the housing crash, to employ seniors who were living out of RV’s and needing work. The pay was poor but it was a lifeline to many people who had no other resources to fall back on. The documentary points out the value this workforce program is but also makes sure you know that Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, capitalized this program and became the richest man on Earth while these migrant workers made $11 an hour.

The same year CamperForce released, Francis McDormand and Peter Spears optioned the film rights to the book with the intention of making it into a feature film. After seeing The Rider at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival, they approached the director, Chloé Zhao, who agreed to write and direct their film. Zhao was still a young director at the time but the work she had produced was highly acclaimed and she was considered someone to keep an eye on, especially at the various film festivals where her films Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider had won several awards. Nomadland would end up being her crowning achievement winning the Academy Award for Best Picture as well as Best Director. The film itself was not a blockbuster but it did turn a profit and she was already working on her first big budget feature while wrapping up her work on Nomadland. That film, The Eternals, an epic sized Marvel Studios picture ended up being held up as an example of the fall of The Marvel Cinematic Universe and to date Chloé Zhao hasn’t released another film, although she is finally working on something new due out sometime next year.

Nomadland is the kind of film that feels like a documentary, missing only the interviews to fill in the gaps in the narrative. It opens up with some on-screen text explaining how the city of Empire, Nevada dissolved when the US Gypsum plant shut down, eliminating their entire workforce and the entire town to boot. Fern (Francis McDormand) had worked there for years alongside her husband who has recently died. Now, out of work and unable to stay, she sells off most of her possessions, buys a van to live in and travels the country searching for work, beginning with a seasonal job at an Amazon fulfillment center through the holiday season. There she makes friends with Linda (Linda May) who invites Fern to a desert rendezvous in Arizona organized by Bob Wells (played by himself). This rendezvous provides a support system and community gathering for fellow nomads. Fern initially declines the offer to go to Arizona but changes her mind when it becomes apparent she will not find anymore work where she is at. 

While at the rendezvous she learns more about migratory work, makes friends, and how to be prepared to take care of herself in case something were to happen while she’s in the middle of nowhere. One of these friends is Dave (David Strathairn), an older man whom she will run into again and will help her get work in South Dakota. Eventually, Dave’s son shows up inviting him to come see his new grandson and, with some prompting from Fern, Dave leaves, but not before inviting her to come visit him and his family. She does, but when invited to stay longer she turns him down and sets out on the road again, looking for the next job.

CamperForce made it clear that the demographic of these nomadic workers was shifting and that younger people were taking up the lifestyle, too, refusing to join into the “American Dream” of owning a house and raising a family. Nomadland doesn’t explore this aspect of the society. Instead, we see mostly people in the same situation as Fern as well as one woman, Swankie, who has a terminal diagnosis and wants to die traveling the country instead of in a hospital room. 

I’ve held a myriad of jobs over the course of my lifetime and one of those involved handling and merchandising produce for a grocery chain. Sometimes that produce would come in crates with a card inside listing the worker who packed the apples or oranges complete with a picture of said person. Usually the name and photo was that of someone hispanic and I had just assumed, like so many other people I worked with, that this was an illegal immigrant working under the table for some farm willing to hire people no questions asked. After seeing Nomadland I had to question my ignorant assumptions and realize that many of these people were not in these migratory positions illegally or because they made poor life choices but because circumstances put them there. One interviewed man in CamperForce had retired with $400,000 in stocks he planned on using to supplement his retirement SSI with. All of that was lost shortly into his retirement forcing him back into the workforce. Many others are in similar positions to Fern where her job closed up shop leaving everyone there unemployed. At a certain age it becomes difficult to begin all over and the minimalist living of a nomad begins to look appealing. 

Nomadland is an eye opening look at an existence that many would not have even considered otherwise. The film doesn’t vilify companies who take advantage of this workforce the way that CamperForce does to a degree. When depicting work at Amazon, among other places, it treats it like any other seasonal job. Fern even goes back the following season and works for Amazon again, which is seemingly expected from her fellow employees who bid her goodbye at the end of the season with a casual “see you next year.” There is little to no pointing fingers in this narrative. Instead, the film is here to bring to our attention these nomadic people who live in their cars, take jobs during the seasonal ups and downs in our country, then move on whenever that dries up. It’s here to personify those people and give a face to an audience that generally were blissfully unaware of their existence. 

This kind of lifestyle has been around for a very long time but it shot up in popularity with the housing crisis and the massive increase in the cost of buying and owning a home. Many people simply cannot afford to buy land anymore and the rental costs are making it difficult to even rent, too. When I was in high school I was told that in my lifetime the cost of living would make the majority or people continue to live with their parents rather than go out and buy their own homes. While that hasn’t happened on a wide scale the way I was told it would, this cost of living has seen steep increases in homelessness and the rise in popularity of a nomadic life. This film depicts that and is eye-opening to what is still a problem with the cost of living in the 21st Century. Jessica Bruder’s book, and the films that sprang out of it, feel like a warning to this country of what is coming if things don’t change. Even so, there will still be people who prefer this kind of minimalist lifestyle and the film is on their side, too. Fern has the opportunity to settle down on more than one occasion and she will end the film on the road, heading to her next destination.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Francis MacDormand, Peter Spears, Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, and Chloé Zhao (won)

Best Director: Chloé Zhao (won)

Best Actress: Francis MacDormand (won)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Chloé Zhao

Best Cinematography: Joshua James Richards

Best Film Editing: Chloé Zhao

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Release Date: February 19, 2021

Running Time: 108 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May and Swankie

Directed By: Chloé Zhao