Frances Mcdormand’s casual brilliance elevates ‘Nomadland’
“You can’t even tell they’re acting.” That’s supposedly the ultimate compliment you can give an actor – a performance so natural and genuine it seems like real life.
It’s not a comprehensive compliment. You can definitely tell Heath Ledger is acting as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” for instance, but it’s one of the greatest performances of all time, transcending camp and comic-book constraints.
And yet.
Frances Mcdormand is so deeply invested in Fern, her character in “Nomadland,” that she disappears into it. Whether she is going about the minutiae of her day or quietly altering the course of her life, Mcdormand’s work is stunning.
You can’t even tell she’s acting. It helps that director Chloé Zhao, who based her screenplay on Jessica Bruder’s book, has cast a lot of non-actors alongside Mcdormand. She used a similar strategy in “The Rider,” her outstanding 2017 film about a down-onhis-luck cowboy.
If anything, “Nomadland,” in theaters and streaming on Hulu on Friday, is an even better film, even more powerful, and that’s saying a lot if you’ve seen “The Rider”.
‘Nomadland’ is more evidence of Chloé Zhao’s brilliant storytelling
Zhao has emerged as a brilliant storyteller, able to convey a lot of emotion in such a subtle way you don’t even realize the wallop till a while after it’s hit you.
But don’t mistake “Nomadland” as some kind of acting exercise. It is instead an exercise in humanizing those living on the margins, whether by choice or circumstance. And for much of the cast, it is their lives.
Fern used to live in Empire, Nevada, but when the local plant shut down, the work – and the town itself — dried up. Fern’s husband died. There’s nothing for her there anymore; there’s really no there there anymore.
So she moves into her van (she calls it Vanguard), which she meticulously customizes, bit by found-object bit, into her … what? Home? When Fern runs into a woman and her daughter, whom she knows, in a sporting-goods store, the woman says she heard Fern was homeless.
Not homeless, Fern says. Houseless. There’s a difference.
Fern finds seasonal work at Amazon fulfillment centers, and other places. She’s working at Amazon in Nevada in winter when the film begins. But it’s freezing, and she loads up and heads south, to Quartzsite, Arizona, among another group of folks who move around the country, working where they can.
Bob Wells (playing himself) is the de facto leader of the group, preaching a kind of freedom this life offers its residents while offering practical help.
But it’s a hard life, hand to mouth for many. It is by its nature transient. Yet Fern is somehow drawn to it. Zhao suggests more than she shows or tells, but you get the idea that Fern is searching for something she can’t find in a traditional life. You also get the idea she may not find what she’s looking for anywhere.
In Arizona, Fern meets Dave (David Strathairn), another modern nomad. He clearly likes her, but Fern is prickly, unwilling or unable to let anyone get too close. They spend some time together. Fern even gets a job working with Dave in a drug store that’s also a kind of greasy spoon.
This movie could have been a mess. Frances Mcdormand makes it great
But you’re always on the move in this life. Eventually Fern makes her way to the home of her sister Dolly (Melissa Smith) and we learn a little bit about how far back Fern’s wandering ways reach. Fern also eventually catches up with Dave at the home of his children. He’d like her to stay, he says. Sure, Fern says. She has to do laundry anyway.
Of course that’s not what he meant. But he must know that Fern isn’t going to stay anywhere too long – she can’t even sleep in a bed in the house, instead repairing to her van at night.
All this could have been a disaster of condescension, an Oscar-winner mingling with exactly the people she is portraying. But “Nomadland” is anything but. The “regular” people are enormously compelling, for one thing. Swankie (she goes by one name) sits down with Fern and delivers a powerhouse life statement Meryl Streep might envy.
But also because of Mcdormand. Especially because of Mcdormand. Yes, it’s something of a trick. She and Zhao know what they’re doing. Yet Mcdormand’s empathy allows her to seamlessly inhabit this world.
It may not seem like Mcdormand is acting. But you can’t take your eyes off her, or off “Nomadland.”