Nomadland!

 Look, you'll either get this movie or you wont. Like the wonderful Pixar animated classic Soul. if you're older and not full of youthful arrogance about being indestructible, you will like this movie, rather appreciate this movie much more than the kid you tell to watch it who then goes yeah old person, it was boring.

Here's the deal (I'm all Joe today), you either thrive on seeing the country and world by slowly letting it unfold thru the window of a vehicle stopping at places no sane person plans on seeing (obscure museums and roadside attractions of giant dinosaurs), or you prefer to have an itinerary of airplane flights, upscale hotels, planned tours and sitting around on a beach chair doing nothing. I prefer the former and that's why Nomadland struck me so hard.

Its a road movie. But its also a commentary on America. Nomads are real in America. People who wander from season to season doing odd jobs and living in a van or a camper , sometimes down by the river. They are "homeless" so to speak. They are also more free than most of us ever could imagine.

In Nomadland, Frances McDormand (a Mount Rushmore actor if there ever was one) plays Fern , a 60 something woman living in Empire, Nevada when the 2008 economic crash occurs, closing a sheetrock factory after 88 years, and shutting the town down. Fern stays, her husband dies of cancer, and Fern grabs her shit, loads it into a creaky van, and leaves. 

She works at Amazon during Christmas, loads up her shit again and heads for Arizona where she meets the nomads at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, a gathering of people like her who follow a nomad guru named Bob Wells  (real guy on Youtube). She meets nomads, who are played by real people not actors, she falls in with them and relationships form. People live, people die, people drop out of the lifestyle, people need help, people help. It makes humanity look tolerable quite frankly.

The details include trips to South Dakota, Nebraska, California ,Arizona, Nevada for seasonal work. The same characters keep popping up. Like a family, its great to see them. These nomads have been acting all their lives and this film contains no awkward not an actor moments. I'm sure when these people tell stories its simply them telling the truth about who they are. Its just fascinating.

Now about the actual actors.

When a female actor turns oh I don't know, now maybe 50 in the past 40, she tends to lose work. They grasp for their glory days and get work done, their lips swell, their faces become unrecognizable and dammit it still doesn't work. But some actresses say fuck it, I am who I am and you can all go to hell if you don't like it. That's Frances McDormand. She is 63 . She looks 63, she acts 63 and she is a delight. I am not sure there are more than 2 or 3 other American actors who could have pulled this off. She is so damned appealing, she comes across as a truly nice person who can draw you in with nothing more than a stupid Happy New Year hat, a sparkler and a quick smile and nod. She's going to win every award known to the industry, that's just a fact.

The only other professional actor in this movie is the wonderful David Strathairn  of what hasn't he been in fame. He's one of those character actors who when you see him you know whatever movie it is has just become better. Oh it may just go from a 1 to a 2 but its his doing that it went up. He plays Dave, another nomad who pops up now and then at the seasonal work sites and obviously has a thing for Fern. But Dave goes another route away from Fern and its irreconcilable in the end. 

Theres no happy ending to Nomadland. Its just real. And the people you meet , like real life nomads Linda May and Swankie and Bob, are a blessing. I want to talk to them for real. But I'm too afraid to search for them.

I watched this movie on Hulu. In my house. And it made us even more angry that this pandemic was so fucked up by certain people. It robbed us of the 2-3 times a year we became Nomads and  drive around endlessly seeing things that would bore others yet fascinates us. 

I cannot recommend watching Nomadland enough. Directed by Chloe' Zhao, I cant wait for her next project. She knows what she's doing.

Bravo!