The Quarantine Stream: ‘Nomadland’ Finds Beauty In The Broken
By Hoai-Tran Bui/March 16, 2021 7:00 am EST
Early on in Nomadland, there’s a scene where Frances McDormand’s Fern attempts to glue together a plate, one of her few precious pieces that she lugged around the country with her in her beat-up RV, after it gets broken by an enthusiastic fellow traveler attempting to help her clean up. She gets frustrated in the process — the plate is smaller, a little more jagged and mean-looking than before. It’s not the same plate that it used to be, but Fern doesn’t have it in her to throw it away and instead keeps it close, one of the few precious mementos of her life before. But the wear and the tear of the road hasn’t made it any lesser, and instead gives it the marks and scars of a more interesting plate that is almost beautiful in its ugliness.
That’s what Nomadland is: an exquisite slice of Americana that embraces beauty amid pain and loss and grief and the relentless trudge through life. Nomadland achieves a kind of serenity in its restless spirit, an acceptance of a different way of life that no one better embodies that than McDormand, who gives a quietly spiky and soulful performance for the ages. She’s aided by Chloé Zhao’s even-handed direction, which takes a fly-on-the-wall approach, preferring to let the characters and real-life nomads drift through life in an aimless, pensive manner that makes Nomadland almost akin to a docudrama.
It’s no wonder that some of the film’s most moving moments comes from some of its most spontaneous moments. One piece of advice from real-life nomad guru Bob Wells perfectly captures the lyrical earthiness of Nomadland: “One of the things I love most about this life is that there’s no final goodbye. You know, I’ve met hundreds of people out here and I don’t ever say a final goodbye. I always just say, ‘I’ll see you down the road.’ And I do.”
