Nomadland

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on May 7, 2021, and ABC Central Victoria on May 10, 2021.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Chloé Zhao.

Cast: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie, Bob Wells.

The view was great but the food and service were lacking.

Is Nomadland the best film of 2020? That's basically the only question that bears consideration for most people. 

"Best" is such a hard thing to quantify, but by many markers, yes, Nomadland is the best film of 2020. It's the most honest, heartfelt, saddest, poignant, and pointed film of that strange, strange year. In a non-pandemic-infused year, it would have hit even harder. It would have shone a spotlight on a forgotten populace of modern America, and made good Americans think about what their nation does with its elders who didn't fit into the economic brackets in which retirement is an option.

Instead, a lot of older people died, the nation was torn in half like a wet newspaper, and there were bigger fish to fry beyond the fate of grey nomads working in beet factories, rock shops and Amazon warehouses. 

Nomadland is the story of one of those grey nomads. Fern (a remarkable McDormand) is a refugee from a dead town, who roams the country from job to job in her van, joining a similar wave of old folks making ends meet in a nation that has forgotten them.

Many of the people asking if Nomadland is the best film of the year will be disappointed. This is always the case, but the fact it's largely plotless and moves at a gentle pace will leave many cold. But it's a quietly powerful story, beautifully told, that tugs on heartstrings and pokes at tearducts. It's a poetic portrait of an ignored demographic, and a study of grief, memory, letting go and finding yourself. In Fern, we have someone who doesn't know where they fit - much like fellow best film Oscar nominee Sound Of Metal, Nomadland is about a search for identity. 

(In fact, Nomadland and Sound Of Metal are kinda the same film.)

Fern is lost in her own country. Having tied herself to a man and a town that no longer exist, she has to strike out on her own to find herself. Along the way she discovers an impressive collection of very real people - Nomadland is largely filled with non-actors. Zhao's decision to use real members of the nomad community is limiting in one way, but hits deeper in another. It means the performances are unpolished, but there's a documentary edge to makes the reality of the situation shine through.

But as much as Fern is lost, she's finding herself and actually enjoying the process. McDormand paints Fern as socially awkward and isolated, but somehow also friendly and not against hanging out with people. She's simultaneously battling the elements and revelling in the openness of the wilderness. It's an unglamourous role - what was the last Oscar-winning performance that involved shitting in a bucket? - but it feels miraculously real. 

Zhao's gentle examination of life on the fringe is gorgeously shot. Along with cinematographer Joshua James Richards, she captures a beauty amid the hardship, and makes the landscape another character in the film, as well as a thematic tool that amplifies the isolation of Fern, but also the wonder of the world she has chosen to travel through.

In the shitshow of 2020, Nomadland, for all its sadness and swipes at modern society, is a triumph of human spirit in a strange way. People will keep coming back to this film for years to come because its messages and themes are timeless. Zhao's success is wonderful, welcome and deserved.