Film Notes: Nomadland
by Jessica Kashdan-Brown
USA | 2021 | 108m | 15 tbc
Director: Chloé Zhao
Starring: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn
Two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand (for Fargo (1996) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)) stars as Fern, a widow in her sixties who takes up a nomadic life on the road after a factory closure leaves her rural Nevada hometown in economic ruin. We follow Fern as she flits from job to job, navigating the broad and uncompromising landscapes of the American West from outside the conventions of modern society, through which lens the film explores the layered meanings of freedom and the importance of community.
Adapted, directed, edited, and coproduced by Chloé Zhao, and with a female lead actor, Nomadland is Triple F-Rated. This is Zhao’s third feature as director, following The Rider, which won dozens of awards, including at the Cannes Film Festival, and which we screened at FilmBath Festival in 2017.
Based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation blurs the lines between fact and fiction in a way that powerfully ‘holds a mirror to society’ – ScreenDaily. As in her previous films, Zhao’s cast is almost entirely made up of non-professional actors alongside McDormand. Many of them were real nomads found while filming, and some had actually appeared in Bruder’s book, such as Linda May, Charlene Swankie, and Bob Wells. Zhao’s directing assistant, Hannah Peterson, told IndieWire that the director often let the screenplay evolve around these real-life characters, ‘collaborating with them to fold their own narratives into the script’ and allowing them ‘to choose how they want to represent themselves.’
McDormand was also encouraged to bring much of her own personality and life to the role, with Zhao commenting in a New York Film Festival press conference that ‘so much is a collaboration with Fran [McDormand] — everything from the plates … to the photographs are from Fran’s real life.’ McDormand actually took on work at many of the places where her character is employed throughout the film, working alongside real employees and even receiving a genuine job offer from a local Target store. She adopted a true itinerant lifestyle for much of the filming, which included sleeping in her own van during some of the shoot, to make her character feel more authentic. In this way, Nomadland is almost entirely built around and interwoven with the real lives of its cast.
Despite the fact that the film tackles highly politicised topics such as the Great Recession, economic inequality, and the harsh realities of living on the margins of society, Zhao made a conscious decision to depoliticise the film. She told IndieWire, ‘I tried to focus on the human experience and things that I feel go beyond political statements to be more universal — the loss of a loved one, searching for home’.
One of few other professional actors in the film is David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)) in the role of Dave, a fellow nomad with a crush on Fern. The film also boasts a soundtrack from renowned Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi (This Is England (2006)).
Described by Peter Bradshaw as a ‘gentle, compassionate, questioning film about the American soul’, Nomadland has already been awarded Venice Film Festival’s most prestigious accolade, the Golden Lion, and Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award, and looks set to further make its mark in this year’s awards season.
We would appreciate if you could take a couple of minutes to complete our audience survey.
If you have already completed the full survey, please tell us your opinion of this film.