Pictured above: Chloé Zhao ‘05, director. Photo courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.
By Casey Roepke ‘21
News Editor
Following the pattern set by her earlier films, Chloé Zhao ’05’s “Nomadland,” which launched on Hulu and in select theaters on Friday, Feb. 19, is an intimate portrayal of an often overlooked community. Frances McDormand stars as Fern, a woman who lost her husband, her job and her town — Empire, Nevada, a real place which closed after the local factory shut down — and embarks on a journey that takes her across the country and back again in pursuit of work and meaning.
This is Zhao’s third film, following stridently in the enclave she has created for herself. Zhao, a Mount Holyoke alumna who majored in politics before studying film production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, is a radically sensitive filmmaker whose work has reinvigorated an entire genre. Her movies are primarily Westerns, complete with sprawling landscapes, sunsets on the desert and Americana realism. “Nomadland” takes one step deeper into this tradition.
After Fern loses everything, she packs her belongings and herself into a small but sturdy van and takes off for a (titularly) nomadic life. She starts just before Christmas with a seasonal packing job at Amazon, where the jarring fluorescent lighting and washed-out cardboard colors contrast with the effervescent beauty of nature that she encounters as she travels from job to job. One of the most compelling segments of the film takes place in Quartzsite, Arizona, where a community of van-dwellers meet annually to promote their lifestyle through educational seminars and supportive learning. Quartzsite acts as a window into the world of nomadic living, and Zhao directs these sequences with a careful hand. The film is never flashy — instead, Zhao’s intimate storytelling feels just a heartbeat away from real life.
Zhao’s films are singularly poignant as portrayals of a middle American slice of life. Her first two films — her debut feature, “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” (2015), and her 2017 award-winning sophomore film “The Rider” — take place on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and she masterfully delves into the daily life of the people who live there. Notably, Zhao employs nonactors to play characters like themselves. For example, “The Rider” is a brilliantly evocative and almost true story of Brady Blackburn (played by Brady Jandreau), a cowboy whom she met while filming her first movie.
In “Nomadland,” Zhao employs similar techniques, and many of the nomads who circle around Fern’s life are real people speaking about their actual lived experiences of nomadic life. This technique grounds the film in a gentleness that is echoed by the characters, who blur between “real” and “fictional” with a charming grace.
Still, “Nomadland” is a step bigger than Zhao’s earlier films because of McDormand’s immense star power. McDormand’s portrayal of Fern is understated, and her soft-spoken and solitary characterization almost fades into the landscape, but each particular acting choice by McDormand intimates the viewer with Fern’s immersive lifestyle.
Fern’s life is not easy, and Zhao does not shy away from showing the raw and human moments she encounters along her journey. But the genius of Zhao’s filmmaking is her exploration of the concept of home. In her first two films, home is the natural landscape of South Dakota — here, in “Nomadland,” home is a more nuanced idea. Fern’s home is her van, but it’s also her relationships with the people she meets on the road. Home is in the memory of her husband and her old life. Home is in the promise of the next turn of the highway, painted by the explosive colors of the setting sun.