Nomadland

NOMADLAND, which stars Frances McDormand as a woman roaming the midwest in an RV, won both the Golden Lion at Venice and the TIFF audience award.

Winner of the prestigious People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival (and a reliable Best Picture Oscar indicator), The Rider director Chloe Zhao returns with her highly anticipated new film Nomadland (and her upcoming Marvel superhero movie, The Eternals.)

Frances McDormand starts as Fern, an independent woman who spends her life on the road, living out of her modest but cosy van. Travelling across America after the closure of her factory-employer literally wiped her township off the map. Fern makes ends meet by taking seasonal jobs working for online retailers, in roadside kitchens, and supervising caravan parks. It is a solitary life, but a happy one where old friends and fellow travellers weave in and out of her life. One such compatriot, Dave (David Straithairn, Good Night And Good Luck), takes a liking to Fern, beginning a delicate courtship.

A timely drama depicting a visually stunning yet increasingly forgotten part of the United Staes of America, Zhao's film is considered an Oscar front-runner for both the filmmaker and star. Based on the non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder.

Official Trailer: Nomadland

REVIEW: Nomadland

In an early scene in the extraordinary Nomadland, a quiet, solitary woman named Fern (Frances McDormand) has bumped into a family she used to know.

One of them inadvertently refers to Fern and the plight in which she presently finds herself as "homeless".

Unerringly polite, yet unfailingly blunt, Fern immediately puts a correction on record: "Not homeless. Houseless. I am houseless."

What does she mean by that, you may well ask? Nomadland has the answer.

An answer that speaks to both the unprecedented times in which all people now live, and also the fondly remembered times which, for some people, will never return.

Fern definitely finds herself in the latter group. She is a member of a rapidly swelling class of people in America who now refer to themselves as "nomads": people who live year-round in campervans, travelling to the places where seasonal work is plentiful enough to draw a basic wage.

Based on Jessica Bruder's best-selling 2017 book Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st century, this film follows a typical year in the life of someone who has no choice but to embrace an itinerant way of life.

For Fern, that means a punishing stint in an Amazon warehouse near her former hometown in the months leading up to Christmas. Then moving west to pick crops as the weather improves.

Way up north, there is talk of work on offer to help run a camping ground.

Way down south, there isn't much work, but there is a selfsufficient community where everyone looks out for everyone else until the job situation improves.

If all of this makes Nomadland sound too grey and bleak as a movie experience, you are wrong. The many colours and singular feeling coursing out of Frances McDormand's commanding portrayal of Fern is acting of the highest order.

Particularly once you learn that McDormand is virtually the only actor in the movie. Almost everybody she interacts with in Nomadland are real-life nomads, and they have stories to tell and tips to share.

McDormand as Fern is a great listener, and what she draws from these people is something so authentic and true, it almost has no business being in a movie at all.

Heartfelt, haunting and always utterly human, Nomadland is definitely going to be a prominent player at the next Oscars.

This review by LEIGH PAATSCH is from the December 31, 2020 issue of The Herald Sun Digital Edition. To subscribe, visit https://www.heraldsun.com.au/.