Review: 'Nomadland' is a beautiful look at people constantly on the road, anchored by Frances McDormand's soulful performance

In “Nomadland,” filmmaker Chloe Zhao envelops us in a world that most of us don’t know, with the familiar face of Frances McDormand as our guide.

McDormand plays Fern, a woman who lost her home in Nevada when the gypsum plant shut down in the Great Recession. Now she lives in a rundown van, driving to where the seasonal jobs are. At her first stop, she’s in a pre-Christmas seasonal job at an Amazon warehouse, filling boxes and moving shipments. Other times of the year, she’s a camp host at a national park, or flipping burgers at Wall Drug in South Dakota, or hauling beets for harvest in Nebraska.

At most stops, she parks her van with other people who live their lives on the road. Sometimes it’s an encampment on Bureau of Land Management land; other times its in a trailer park. When she’s alone, she may park at a truck stop or supermarket, running the risk of being rousted by security guards.

Fern finds friendship and life hacks from three mentors, all portrayed here by real-life nomads. Linda May, a woman just a few years older than Fern, shows her the most efficient way to clean a campground men’s room. Bob Wells is a guru of sorts, delivering lectures about life on the road. And Swankie is a gruff old woman who recounts the wonders she has seen in her many travels.

With Jessica Bruder’s 2017 book about nomadic Americans as her compass, Chao follows Fern as she travels in her van, her solitude sometimes broken by brief friendships. One such friend is Dave (David Staithairn), who contemplates leaving the road to live with his estranged son. Fern is offered the chance at domesticity, in a scene where she’s reunited with Dolly (Melissa Smith), her suburbanite sister — who knows that Fern’s wandering spirit, not merely her economic plight, that draws her to the road.

The images of these campsites have historical parallels, from the covered wagons venturing to the West to the caravans of Okies escaping the Dust Bowl. But the problems of their inhabitants are also entirely modern, from a busted carburetor to the limitations of Social Security benefits.

One cannot overstate how multifaceted and how powerful McDormand’s performance is here. She conveys the fierce independence she’s chosen, the tenacity it takes to maintain it, and the crushing loneliness that comes with it — often with imperceptibly small gestures and without saying a word.

Zhao — who directed and edited the film, and wrote the screenplay — follows the pattern of her past films, “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” and “The Rider,” as she and her regular cinematographer, Joshua James Richards, set her quiet, brooding characters in contrast to the wide-open spaces of the American West. As Zhao and McDormand patiently reveal throughout “Nomadland,” Fern may seem dwarfed by the vastness of the plains, but we come to see her heart is as big as the mountains on the horizon.

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‘Nomadland’

★★★★

Available Friday, December 4, for one week on the Film at Lincoln Center virtual cinema (and is sold out); scheduled to open in theaters on Friday, February 19, 2021. Rated R for some full nudity. Running time: 108 minutes.