Reviewed by Sunchica Unevska
Towards: "Nomadland", director, screenwriter and editor: Chloe Zhao, starring: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie, cinematography: Joshua James Richards, music: Ludovico Einaudi, USA/Germany 2020
When the search turns into an illusion
“’Nomadland’ is a story dedicated to those who have to leave," says the end of this specific road movie. But, not referring here to the physical departure, but to what is even more difficult, leaving the place you belong to, leaving your world that you have been building for years, leaving home, separating from the people who were your meaning and with whom you shared everything that gave you the goal and the strength to move forward. And then when it was difficult, and then when it was impossible, and then when it was painful, but when you had what or whom to fight for. When that disappears, everything seems to disappear.
“Nomadland” is a very powerful film, which talks about those things that we often do not want to think about. It is a film that confronts us, not with the end, because the end is not as difficult as not having an end when you lose everything. In it, director Chloe Zhao (who adapts the screenplay according to the book by journalist Jessica Bruder) also criticizes that social moment, when people after so many years of work are left with nothing, when those who are old instead of receiving a pension and a dignified life, can so easily find themselves on the street. And that's scary, it's scary to have $ 500 in Social Security after 30 or 50 years of work, it's scary when you have no sertainty, but what's even scarier is when you lose your home, when you actually lose your belonging.
Chloe Zhao really deals with social issues and talks about the cruelty of a system that does not care about people, because they are just a consumables. But, her focus is not only on that, what is hidden in the background, what comes out from under the surface and hurts even more, is the feeling of belonging. At one point Fern's sister will say that nomadic life is in the American tradition, but what does nomadic life actually mean? How much is it a choice, and how simple it’s a need, when in fact you have no other choice? Really, the people Fern (Frances McDormand) meets are also looking for work, but, many of them didn’t go of the road just because of that, each has its own story (many in the film are also the real nomads that Bruder met during her three-year nomadic life across America).
Fern is one of those who can’t reconcile with the loss of everything her life was woven of, with what she believed in, with the loss of a sense of need, with the loss of basic dignity, with the loss of meaning in beauty or in suffering. Really, all this is life, but not when you haven’t place in it. Somehow, the author talks about something much bigger than the physical loss and the loss of a job and security. The nomads in this film are not just looking for work, they are not just looking for the right place under the sun, but they are looking for themselves, they are looking for that unique sense of life that made them feel alive.
Of course it is scary when you are left with nothing. But, when Fern's former student is asked if she is homeless, Fern replies that she is not homeless, he just has no house. She is not homeless, the house doesn’t determine, because, as stated in the movie, you carry the home in you, it is in you as long as you have the belonging. But, when you lose her, then one feels like is on the street, as if left to the wind of life.
After loses her husband, and later her job and house, Fern decides to go on a trip. She doesn’t even know where, where the road will take her. The people she meets are interesting, people who often talk about those most basic values, about that feeling of fulfillment, about finding meaning in freedom and connection with nature, about happiness and the feeling of living. From outside, these are people who are seemingly unhappy and lost somewhere in the abyss, but when you get to know them better, you will see that this is not the case.
On the one hand, the film criticizes that slavement of capital and the system to which people are the least important. But, these are not stories of loss, but of departure. For those who have to leave, not because they can’t cope otherwise, but because they are looking for something different. Fern's sister will say that she has always been braver and more honest, that she was eccentric and that her departure left a big gap. And Fern, as she says herself, lives from memory for a long time. She believes that everything that her husband did and that meant something to her and their life, should be preserved. “The dead live if you remember them”, she said. And she consciously continues to live in the past, trying (no matter how futile) to find the same feeling that filled her so much then.
Not that there are no possibilities, there are different solutions, but that is not it. Fern will find himself in the land of the nomads because of the circumstances of life, but also because of the inner unrest that constantly makes her go further. Work and security certainly have a big part, but not the biggest. The biggest loss is when you lose yourself. That's why those stories are not always unhappy, no, they have a strange pulse of life, all depends on where your search ends or maybe where it begins...
Frances McDormand gives another ingenious, amazing role that makes you cry, not because she lost, not because she is unhappy, not because she can’t reconcile with what is happening to her, nor can it be found in it, but because she is in search of a “ghost”. Because, she seeks the feeling that can no longer return, she seeks the peace and belonging which are no more, she seeks herself in some shadows and memories, but they are not enough. And that is the most precious thing that the film carries within itself.
Chloe Zhao manages to capture it all that way, that you feel that you can touch reality, that you can feel emotions, that you can see emptiness, that you can catch the unreachable, which is constantly floating in the air. Social problems are not the goal here, they are just an occasion for human stories, for those destinies that will be found at the crossroads in life, when security can’t bring the unknown, when work doesn’t restore dignity, when the nomadland becomes the only choice, not because there is no other choice, but because it gives the illusion of a search, a search that brings hope that someday maybe again you will feel that true belonging that only makes sense.
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