A winning formula...
GO OFF THE BEATEN TRACK WITH TRIPLE OSCAR-WINNING DRAMA
NOMADLAND (12A) ★★★★✩
REVIEWS BY DAMON SMITH
IN ONE of the naturalistic conversations tightly woven into the fabric of Nomadland, Bob Wells – a real-life trailblazer for the vandwelling nomadic lifestyle – explains to Frances Mcdormand’s widow that members of his freespirited community never say goodbye.
“We just say, ‘I’ll see you down the road’,” he softly professes.
It is impossible to say farewell to writer-director Chloe Zhao’s achingly beautiful and poetic paean to solitude inspired by the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America In The Twentyfirst Century, by Jessica Bruder.
Directed, produced, written and edited by the Chinese-american film-maker, this delicate character study – which won three Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, at the weekend’s Academy Awards – lingers fondly in the memory, dedicated to a generation of outsiders who have abandoned conventional living and created self-sufficient communities off the beaten track.
An unselfconscious lead performance from Mcdormand as a grieving vagabond on the fringes of American society – for which she won the Best Actress Oscar – is enriched by a supporting cast of real-life nomads.
The film opens with archive images of Empire, a prosperous mining town in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada.
When the gypsum plant closed in 2011, the community evaporated, leaving behind a graveyard of weather-beaten empty stores and company homes.
Sixty-something former worker Fern (Mcdormand) retrieves precious belongings from her storage locker before she hits snow-laden roads in a rusty white van. A seasonal job fulfilling orders at an Amazon warehouse tides her over.
One of Fern’s colleagues, Linda May (playing herself), quits the cacophonous shop floor for the serenity of a desert camp run by Bob Wells, which provides “a support network for people who need help now”.
Fern follows Linda May to sunscorched Arizona, where she is embraced by dispossessed and displaced souls including David (David Strathairn) and Swankie (Charlene Swankie).
Moving between camps and temporary jobs, Fern is pricked with guilt by an overdue reunion with her sister (Melissa Smith) before she confronts the reality of life without her husband.
Using Fern as a dramatic fulcrum, Nomadland cherishes the enduring power of the human spirit on numerous soul-stirring detours without a clearly designated and potentially contrived final destination.
Zhao’s trek into America’s economically-ravaged heartland is understated and profoundly moving .
Mcdormand melts effortlessly into her surroundings, fiercely committed to authenticity in her role whether she is relieving herself in a bucket or tenderly recalling her father’s poignant mantra: “What’s remembered, lives.”
By that simple measure, Nomadland burns brightly.
■ On Disney+ now and in cinemas from May 17