Nomadland

 

The days of frothy Oscar-winning films are apparently gone. The Moonlight win was bungled and seemed like an over-correction in the first place. But Parasite was an incredible win too. Frothy, fun films like Shakespeare In Love with stunt-performer awards like giving someone a statuette for a brief performance: all that may be a thing of the past as the Oscars go into their Ninetieth decade. And even if the ceremony might have not been popular, and might have been weird—I didn’t watch it!—It’s certainly true that there’s a profound brilliance and simplicity about the overall winner: Nomadland. Not just because a woman has won Best Director for the second time. And also not because Frances McDormand won an award for the third time…

The sensationally good McDormand is one of two names in the film, along with David Strathairn. McDormand is Fern: a woman who has chosen to live a life that’s away from working to pay down debts. She doesn’t understand why the objective of most people is to go into debt to have a house that they can’t afford. So she lives in a RV and the film doesn’t really hold back in showing that the life is very different to domestic “normality”. Unless you can afford to park your RV somewhere with facilities, there are none. And the value of run-of-the-mill items like for instance a plate is shown to be critical in a scene which brought  unexpected tears.

Nomadland isn’t about a person coming to a conclusion and changing her circumstances. Fern doesn’t lack for friends or for moments of pure joy in her life. She relies on seasonal work and when money is required for the van she does have family she can call on, but she also has to go somewhere for a guaranteed bit of money: Amazon. The Amazon “Fulfilment Centre” doesn’t come off all that well, and yet somehow Fern and the others are making use of them as much as they need to.

The film is a series of scenes in the life of Fern and her friends, many of whom are genuine “Nomads” from the book on which the film is based. Chloé Zhao said that people are inherently good and “Even though sometimes they might seem like the opposite is true, but I have always found goodness in the people I met everywhere I went in the world.” And this is laudable praise for all those of us who try to be, and who sometimes find it difficult either to continue in our own worlds or make the change to strip away all that’s not good about them.