Butler's Cinema Scene

Frances McDormand

“NOMADLAND” My rating: A-

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“I’m not homeless,” protests Fern (France McDormand) in a key moment from Chloe Zhao’s haunting “Nomadland.”

“Just houseless.”

There’s a significant difference, at least according to Fern and the countless other Americans spending their so-called Golden Years living out of their vans, RVs and cars.

Based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 book about “the end of retirement,”  “Nomadland” straddles the line between fiction and documentary.

McDormand, of course, is one of our greatest actors; here she’s joined by the always-reliable  David Strathairn.

But most of the “players” in this film are real nomads, folk who follow the changing seasons (Texas in winter, the Dakotas in the summer) supporting themselves with seasonal gigs (working services jobs as cooks and cleaners, manning a sprawling Amazon fulfillment center during the Christmas rush).

By portraying themselves they give Zhao’s film a reality that seeps into the viewer’s bones. This film is less acted than lived in; as a result it is sad and beautiful and achingly human.

McDormand’s widowed Fern has been on the road for several years. She was more or less cast out into the desert when Empire NV,  the company burg in which she had lived her entire adult life — became an overnight ghost town with the closing of its gypsum mine.

Zhao’s unhurried screenplay follows Fern over the course of a year. There’s no plot to speak of; the film is a series of encounters with other wanderers. Fern attends a huge gathering of the houseless on BLM land out in the desert (the convenor, the bearded, barrell-chested Bob Wells — playing himself — holds seminars on nomad survival strategies).

She works in the kitchen of the famous Wall Drug Store tourist trap near the Black Hills. Her fellow nomad Dave (Strathairn) is a part-time ranger at the nearby Badlands National Park.

Frances McDormand, David Strathairn

It’s clear that Fern relishes the wide open spaces of the Western landscape through which she moves. But it’s not an easy life.

She courts frostbite by sleeping in her van during a blizzard (she’s offered a bed in a shelter operated by a church, but won’t accept). She’s whipped by the wind and burned by the sun. She’s adept at doing her business in a roadside ditch between passing cars. She’s a wiz at whipping up soup on a gas burner.

There are moments of human interaction, but mostly Fern keeps her own company. Sometimes she experiences solitude; at others, loneliness.

Bruder’s book explored the economic inequalities that have led to so many people living like gypsies. But Chao’s film is less about policy than personality.  Many of Fern’s fellow wanderers have been forced into this lifestyle by financial hardship, yet the film suggests that in many cases houselessness is a conscious choice, a retreat from the messiness and/or  limitations of conventional life.

For many of these folk, the nomadic life is a way to avoid unhealthy relationships or family responsibilities. Some of these people have had their lives ravaged by loss; more than a few of the men are engaged in a lifelong race to outrun PTSD. Just about everyone, it seems, has a heart-breaking back story.

It’s hard to underestimate the effectiveness of McDormand’s performance here. It doesn’t seem at all like performing; there’s not a shred of actorly technique on display. She simply is.

By the same token, Zhao’s direction is so matter-of-fact that we sometimes fail to realize the marvelous moments she has put before us, especially Joshua James Richards’ cinematography (no current d.p. so beautifully captures the “magic hour” just before sunset) and Ludovico Einaudi’s piano-heavy musical score.

Indeed, Zhao does here pretty much what she did a couple of years back with “The Rider,” a film about a rodeo cowboy forced by injury to give up horses. She delivers an unhurried examination of real people playing themselves, and in the process finds universal truths.

| Robert W. Butler