Nomadland (review)

I just watched Nomadland and I am moved to write about it. At the start of it I was challenged to focus on the story, instead of wondering if Frances McDormand is a Karen or not. She seems like a Karen to me. As the film unfolds, I begin to vacillate on whether I am watching a propaganda piece on the preciousness of the “Forgotten America” (white, America--in all of its myriad, unbridled, never ending fears) or our connection as humxnity, or the lie of American Exceptionalism as the 1%r’s twist their shiny perpetually new shoes onto he necks of everybody else. At one point I even had to turn it off, step away, and do something else because I just did not know what this film was trying to feed those of us choosing to watch it. 

It scared me too. I wondered, as Fern, played by Frances McDormand, sat alone in her van eating a chicken leg or wishing faceless people “Happy New Year!” with a sparkler in her hand and a tiara on her head, would that be me one day? All alone? Moving from place to place, working miscellaneous jobs--backbreaking or not--long after I am able to or want to? All alone, making connections where I can or when opportunities present themselves? I kind of feel like her, now. I spend most of my time alone. Like Fern, I enjoy my company, my freedom, my autonomy, and also like Fern, I enjoy people and connecting with them. I like nature, critters, fauna and flora, the stars and moon, the sun, everything that God created, and I like connecting to all of them too, just like I do with people. Just like Fern. Maybe, just like Frances McDormand. 

At the end of the film, as Fern says a proper goodbye to the part of her journey that was gone, the part of her story that included her--now deceased--husband, a community that was no more, and the track house with a backyard that was a desert, I yearned for the story to not end there, with her exiting the back door to look one last time at her desert. In my mind, I pleaded for the “fade out" to not come. Not yet. I just wanted to know, just a little, of what happens next.