HIT THE ROAD!
IN SPIRIT, AT LEAST, WITH FRANCES MCDORMAND IN ‘NOMADLAND’
Who loves Frances McDormand? We do! Who loves vast American landscapes? Also us! Who loves Frances McDormand in vast American landscapes? The Coen Brothers, for two (see: Fargo), and also Martin McDonagh (see: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and now Chloé Zhao, director of the meditative, restorative Nomadland, which boasts, frankly, an embarrassment of both.
McDormand plays Fern, a woman in her sixties who, when the movie begins, is recovering from her own private apocalypse. In 2011, the gypsum plant in Empire, Nebraska, was closed, turning her hometown into a ghost town (Empire is, or was, a real place). Fern has lost her house, and also her husband, to cancer; we see him only in her well-thumbed photographs. So what do you do when your life falls apart? Or more specifically, what do you when your life falls apart in America? You hit the road.
Fern now lives in a van, and we follow her as she drifts around the western United States — Nevada, Nebraska, Arizona, South Dakota, California — befriending other itinerants, many played by non-actors using their real names, who extol the virtues of the modern nomadic lifestyle. She picks up seasonal work where she can — harvesting beetroot, helping out at a trailer park, packing boxes for Amazon — but she seems happiest when she is alone, bathing naked in a pool, or scrambling over rocks, absorbing each moment.
Nomadland has been racking up an incredible tally of awards including, in February, the Golden Globe for best dramatic film, and is expected to
add to them at the Oscars in April. It’s not hard to see why: this is a beautiful, languorous film about how we find meaning in our existence when our productive (and, yes, reproductive) use is spent. McDormand’s performance as Fern is, of course, subtle and unsentimental and perfect.
More generally, it’s a film about the bigness of things, and the smallness of us. All around Fern are signs of the scale of the world — the American world — from the giant sequoias of California and the 80ft replica dinosaur outside the Wall Drug Store in South Dakota, to the vast warehouses of Amazon and the distant Rockies that stretch across desert horizons. Should she feel insignificant? Should she feel free? Is there even a difference?
And then there are the clouds! Ah, the clouds. You could watch the film for the staggering skies alone. If Nomadland doesn’t make you yearn for wide open spaces then nothing will. Did we mention it also stars Frances McDormand? Nomadland premieres on Star on Disney+ on 30 April and will be in cinemas in May