A Report on Holiday Viewing: “Nomadland”
Last week I shared a few pics from the Christmas-New Year holiday, and also let fall that it had been a fairly rainy experience. The great thing about that, though, is that it totally justifies concentrating on catching up on reading and viewing, both ‘at home’ (TV!) & ‘abroad’ (cinema!)
When it came to the film viewing, the surprise positive was Nomadland. I say ‘surprise’ because I didn’t really know what I was going to see, and the format was unexpected. Nonetheless, I was immediately interested in and engaged by the film.
The unexpected format was a hybrid between a documentary and a drama, with (I believe) only two of the main characters being fictional. It was not a “docudrama”, though (imo), because the “arcs” of the main characters were fictional, albeit within a very “slice of life” format (hence putting the reference to character arcs in quote marks.)
Otherwise, the majority of those that appeared in the film were real people, the “nomads” who have chosen or been forced by circumstance to live in vans / mobile homes, following an itinerant lifestyle. I call the film “documentary” in the sense that it documents their lives, albeit through a fictional lens. Some give the impression of choosing the lifestyle voluntarily, while others move continuously in order to obtain casual seasonal employment.
What holds it all together is the central figure of Fern, played by Frances MacDormand. Her fictional arc of an ageing woman who has lost her home and livelihood due to adverse circumstances, but whose determination to remain independent leads her into the nomadic, itinerant worker existence, provides a “window” into the lives of America’s real nomadic community.
Frances MacDormand’s performance is stoic and the narrative minimalist, the film’s physical and emotional landscapes stark. Together, this troika deliver a film experience that is understated and powerful in inverse proportion.
While the past has famously been said to be, “… a foreign country: they do things differently there” (LP Hartley, The Go-Between) I felt Nomadland opened a window into an aspect of America that was previously unknown to me, where people do indeed live in a way that is foreign to my experience. I found the viewing experience thought-provoking and rewarding. Accordingly, I’m recommending the film.
Note: I understand Nomadland is based on a book, Nomadland: Surviving America In The Twenty-first Century (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017) by Jessica Bruder. The book is non-fiction.