On the road: Frances McDormand in Nomadland

NOMADLAND
Directed by Chloé Zhao
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆

ONE-TRICK towns whose industries have collapsed run like a sore through the USA.

Those once-prosperous nooks and crannies scattered across the American plains, which built and then bought the products of the post-war consumer boom, are a well-viewed barometer of decline.

In Chloe Zhao’s extraordinary, triple-Oscar-winning film, the landscape of a crumbling Any Town USA immediately asks a question of the lead (Frances McDormand).

Without human attachment to anchor someone, what is to keep you from being on the move, finding peace in a vast land?

She believes without that attachment, coupled with the loss of community bonds based on work, a town feels empty.

Fern (McDormand) is a widow, who along with losing her husband, has lost her job.

She puts her meagre possessions into a lock-up garage, kits out the back of a van, and takes to the road.

We join her as she criss-crosses counties, stops off for a few weeks at a time in a mobile home park to work shifts in an Amazon warehouse and harbour scarce resources.

We are introduced to a rag-bag range of characters, from her friends who can’t quite get her lifestyle, and don’t understand a world where choice and necessity isn’t black and white, to those she encounters on the road.

While Fern exudes rootlessness, she also feels a strong attachment to her home on wheels – it contains memories and offers a sense of security. It becomes a silent character on the journey.

Zhao has pulled off a number of feats. Three characters are non-professional actors, people met on the road, drafted in to play fictional versions of themselves. There is a gentleness about their performances that gives an idea of the director’s approach. All are terrific.

The musical score dovetails with vistas to create a consuming atmosphere. It feels like a perfect film to watch on a big screen when cinemas reopen – a powerful story played out across an equally powerful backdrop.

Essentially, Zhao and McDormand have created characters who swing on an emotional pendulum. It is a grown-up approach to drama, an acceptance that motives are never cut and dried, and being human means being both fragile and strong.

This is not a romanticised take on the American Dream, but instead recognises the harsh reality of the pioneer spirit that has become a warped, gilded cliché in American culture.