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, wondering if Frances McDormand is a Karen or not. As the film unfolds, I begin to vacillate over whether or not I am watching a propaganda piece on the preciousness of the “Forgotten America” (i.e. European descended America, in all of their unbridled, never ending fears), or is it speaking on the lie that is American Exceptionalism as the 1%r’s twist their shiny perpetually new shoes onto the necks of everybody else, or is the film imparting genuine commentary about our undeniable oneness as the beautiful myriad humxns beings that we all are? Not just “We are stronger together,” but rather, we are meant to be together. Being together is good. 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 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 own 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, all this life within existence, I like connecting to all this life. 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 the desert, I yearned for the story to not end there, with her exiting the back door to look out, 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.