What I’m watching: a film that harkens back to social dramas of the 1930s

Date: 3/1/2021

On Hulu: “Nomadland”

In the 1930s no one matched Warner Bros. as the producer of films “torn from the nation’s headlines.”

At a time when many people went to the movies to escape the grim reality of the Great Depression, Warner frequently made dramas that directly commented on the issues facing most Americans. Movies such as “Wild Boys of the Road,” “gangster” films such as “The Public Enemy” and “I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang” were hard-hitting reflections of the nation.

“Nomadland” reminded me of those classic Warners films. Based on the non-fiction book, “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century” by Jessica Bruder, the film is about the phenomenon that occurred after the recession of 2008. Some Americans with no permanent job or home, started living in their cars or vans and traveling from one seasonal job to another.

The book was adapted into a script by Chloe Zhao, who also directed the movie.

The film is a work of fiction, but is set in places where these modern nomads go to work and co-stars three actual nomads including Bob Wells, whose many videos on Youtube encourage the idea of “vandwelling.”

In a low-key manner, it introduces viewers to something many people, including me, did not know existed.

This use of real people and real places strengthen the fictional narrative of Fern, (Frances McDormand). Fern is a widow who had spent her entire married life in a tiny company town of Empire, NV. When the company closes its factory there, the town literally disappears and Fern hits the road.

Converting her van into a moving apartment, Fern successfully seeks Christmas season work at an Amazon warehouse. She lives in her van in a nearby campground and her friend, actual nomad Linda May, suggests to go to a desert rendezvous in Arizona organized by Bob Wells.

Fern joins her there and starts in earnest in a new lifestyle. There is much she has to learn about being a vandweller, but the community is very welcoming and willing to teach her. It’s at the Arizona site she meets a fellow vandweller named David (David Strathairn).

She sees David at another location, where both of them are working.

Now, I have to say here that at any point where this film could have a conventional story, it takes a different turn. So, there is no moment when Fern, as a single middle-aged woman driving an old van in the middle of the West, is in peril. There is also no romantic moment that changes the course of the story.

Instead what we have is a quiet, sometimes slow-moving story about a woman who has apparently found a life that provides her with the emotional structure that she needs. Fern clearly loved her husband and they made a life together but that has changed. She is looking for something else and she has found it.

Some people might see either a sadness in Fern or perhaps even a selfishness, but Fern is another character in the long American popular culture who simply sees her life’s goals as different than the ones society dictates. Henry David Thoreau would probably identify with Fern in this regard.

Zhao has a wonderful eye for framing each scene, whether it’s an exterior in a national park or in the kitchen of the famous Wall Drug in South Dakota. I think the pace could have been picked up a bit, but it does reflect the nature of this lifestyle.

McDormand does a great job with an under-stated but frequently intense performance. Fern is no romantic, no pushover, but relatable as someone who is seeking a new life.

I have to say the end of the film left me slightly depressed. I’m not sure why as Fern appears to be happy with her choices. Perhaps it’s because I can’t imagine myself living out of van at my age.