Directing: A-
Acting: B+
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A

Why do I love Nomadland so much? It’s hard to say . . . and maybe it being hard to say is why I love it so much.

It’s hard not to love a movie that pushes the form into new territory, does something few, if any, other movies have done. The Harry Potter series followed along as a bunch of kids grew up, and also a bunch of adults got older, over some eleven years. Boyhood took the concept to a further extreme by having the cast meet a few days each year for twelve years, then edited the footage together to create a story for a single movie, in which we watch the characters age in real time. We could even bring in the MCU here, noting that Marvel managed to produce over twenty movies over just over a decade, which collectively tell a single, overall story.

Nomadland pushes the medium of film into new territory in both smaller and newer ways. Granted, it’s not unprecedented to blend real-life people into a fictionalized narrative (consider the excellent 2011 film Bernie, which tells a true story through interviews with real people who were there, but actors depicting the story they tell). Nomadland blends them in a uniquely seamless way, though, with the vast majority of the supporting characters being real-life nomads, essentially playing themselves: they all use their real first names in the film.

There’s an immersive element to Nomadland that is hard to shake, the fact that director Chloé Zhao and stars Frances McDormand and David Strathairn actually living in vans themselves during production. This approach clearly elevates the final product, in which it is impossible to tell how much is actually scripted. This is based on the 2017 book by Jessica Bruder, but the film’s production inserts itself into the lives of these so-called nomads as they actually exist. Many of them take periodic seasonal jobs in order to fund an otherwise incredibly minimalist life, including work at Amazon fulfillment centers. (Interesting that the film is not streaming on Prime Video, but rather on Hulu.)

There’s not much plot to speak of; Nomadland is instead much more of a portrait: of both an alternative way of life, and of a particular character. The woman Frances McDormand plays, Fern, is a childless widow who is from Empire, Nevada, a town which emptied after its lifeblood and main employer United States Gypsum closed down its mine in the wake of the Great Recession in 2011. This is the year in which Nomadland is set, with Zhao filming McDorman’s travels through seven states over several months.

I can’t help but wonder how much total footage Zhao got. The final result it superbly edited, beautifully shot, creating a portrait that is ultimately quite moving, offering an understanding of how people might choose to live this way. There is an anti-capitalist undertone to some of it, but mostly it’s just people living their lives with a kind of freedom most of us only dream of. McDormand embodies the role of Fern as well as any she’s ever done. Strathairn plays Dave as a man whose interest in Fern never quite moves into romantic territory—the only romance here is with the open road—and whose prioritization of nomadic life shifts along with his own familial relationships.

Zhao subtly illustrates how this life is not for everyone, but for some, it’s everything. For several, it’s a fitting last act to their life. Fern is a bit younger than a lot of them, and when she runs into certain people from Empire, they worry about her far more than they necessarily need to, thinking of her as “homeless” when that is not technically true. In the meantime, Fern learns many lessons in the ways of her new life, some as trial by fire, some as favors from the people she meets along the way.

There’s a hint of sweetness to the overall arc of Nomadland, as Zhao finds to need to find any of the nomads to be sinister or predatory. Instead, she finds a very cooperative society of travelers, each of them with their own story, none of them boring. The fact that almost all of them appear just as themselves means that there is no element of “Hollywood glamor” in any of these depictions, and McDormand fits right in among them. This is a woman who is the epitome of aging gracefully, a beacon of naturalistic beauty with no obsession over youth. Fern is just a woman who wants to move on, to keep moving on.

“See you down the road,” they say, as a means of never saying a final goodbye. It’s the basic vibe of Nomadland, and it’s the perfect sentiment with which to leave us.

*It’s the journey . . . there is no destination.*

Overall: A-