When the television ads for Nomadland began to run, I knew it was a movie I wanted to see. This was even before it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, before Frances McDormand was nominated for Best Actress, and before Chloe Zhao was nominated for Best Director. There was just something about this film that made me know: I need to see this movie.
The problem was (with theaters closed because of the pandemic) it was only available to stream on HULU and we were not HULU subscribers. Then I discovered that you can get a free one month subscription to HULU and I was hooked. Or maybe one should say we were HULU-ed. The truth is, of course, they give you the free subscription month because they know that most people will not stop their subscription at the end of one month—but it is an option.
Nomadland was the first thing we watched on HULU. Why was I so drawn to this film? Perhaps it is just the power of advertising; but if I am honest, I will admit that I am a Frances McDormand groupie. She is one of my favorite actresses, probably because you are never aware that she is acting. She is so believable in each character she plays that you feel you know this person. McDormand never disappoints and this is certainly true in Nomadland.
To me this film is a visual poem. A very humble and unpretentious poem. The cinematography, the characters, the hardships, the joys, the bits and pieces of multiple human stories link together like one stanza stacking upon the next.
This film draws you into a different reality than most of us have ever known: the reality of people who live permanently in their vans, their campers and some, even in their cars. Vandwellers is how they label themselves and their tribe of fellow nomads. They are not doing this as an adventure (though adventures happen); most are doing it as a financial necessity.
Interestingly, most of the film’s characters (and real vandwellers) are older Americans. Life did not turn out for them as they imagined and hoped. The recession of 2008 wiped out their investments. They were shut out of the job market at age 50 after they lost a job they had held for decades. A factory closed sending an entire town into unemployment and bankruptcy. They went through a crushing and costly divorce. A health crisis wiped out their savings. Suddenly at age 60 or even 70, they found themselves unable to make their mortgage or pay their rent and the best option seemed to be to purchase a van as their home.
As Fran tells one of her former neighbors, “I am not homeless. I am just houseless.”
Imagine trying to survive solely on your $ 500 per month Social Security check. Regardless of what our members of Congress try to tell us, you can’t live on that. Not in this country, not in 2021.
Many of the characters in the film are vandwellers in real life; they aren’t playing a role in this film—they are living this reality. Van dwellers are also sometimes known as workampers as they travel from one seasonal job to the next, usually staying in campgrounds. They work the holiday season at Amazon warehouses; they help with the sugar beet harvest in South Dakota; they serve as campground hosts. They try to find a warm place to camp in the winter.
But the film is not a documentary. McDormand’s fictional character of Fern punctuates the film, giving us a storyline to follow and, without exaggeration or sentimentality, poignantly reveals the reality of being “houseless.” Following Fern’s story gives us a character to identify with and important questions to ponder: “Could this happen to me? Could I do this? Would I survive? What if…”
I was so taken by the film, directed by Chloe Zhao, I sought out the book which is the basis of the film and checked it out of our local library. The full title of the book, by Jessica Bruder, is this: Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.
As I read the brief bio of the author on the book’s dust cover, this line jumped out at me: “ …[her] work focuses on subcultures and the dark corners of the economy.” This is Nomadland, large and bold.
Bruder spent three years, traveled 15,000 miles (sometimes living in a van of her own—that she nicknamed Van Halen—and spoke with hundreds of people living this new nomadic life. She reminds us repeatedly that we do not have a wage gap in this country; we have a wage chasm. She writes:
“The top 1% now makes 81 times what those in the bottom half do. For American adults on the lower half of the income ladder—some 117 million of them—their earnings have not changed since the 1970’s.”
Even if I never experience what it is to live this life, both the film and the book, especially the book, have made me much more aware of the “invisible” people who live on the margins of our society, not by choice but because they have no other choice. I shake my head in despair when members of Congress hem and haw over giving a $1400 stimulus check to people who are trying their best not to wind up living in a van or on the streets. Yes, some people did not really need that stimulus check, but sometimes we need to do things, to take action, to make sure that those in the “dark corners of the economy” can survive. We are called to err on the side of compassion at times instead of arguing for the perfect solution. Some people really cannot afford to wait.
There is a community—a beloved one at that—among the vandwellers. There is example after example of how people help one another, care for one another, teach one another what they need to know to live the life of a vandweller/workamper. Information about jobs is shared; a bowl of chicken noodle soup is brought to the van of someone in the community who gets ill; a pot of coffee is made to share with others around a campfire. But there is no doubt that vandwelling/workamping is a hard and often brutal life.
It was interesting to be reading the book while the workers at the Amazon plant in Alabama were getting ready to vote on unionizing. I do not know all the facts, but from what I have read and heard, Amazon workplaces brutalize their employees; safety and health violations are rampant and go uncorrected. Yet, the workers at the plant in Alabama voted against the union. People who desperately need jobs are often too afraid to speak out or vote against employers for fear of losing the only means they have of paying their bills, of surviving. Sadly, Nomadland is not a story about the past, it is a story about the present—and it is likely to be about the future as well.
A review in The New Yorker says that Nomadland has a “fierce sadness” about it. This description is piercingly true.
If you are not already streaming HULU, sign up for your free month and watch this film. Buy the book (preferably from an independent bookstore, not Amazon) or check it out of the library as I did. Come along on this riveting journey into the dark underbelly of our economy as you travel with this group of resilient, often funny, and very determined people who just refuse to give up. They refuse to give up on themselves.
Wonderful film and great thoughts about it. Thanks!
I still need to watch this film! After reading your insightful words, I'm going to make sure I see it soon!