After her husband dies, Fern sells most of her belongings, buys an RV and decides to live in it, moving through the road from town to town, from job to job. She meets other van-nomads, including David, who is interested in her. When David moves back to his family, he invites Fern to live together. However, Fern just borrows some money from her sister and goes back into living as a nomad.
“Nomadland” is a bitter critique of the negligence of the 21st century capitalism towards the retired people and a shortage of financial savings among each new generation, the working class that has to work for the rest of their lives, even in old age, but is written and done in a boring and banal way. The director Chloe Zhao took the strategy of showing the feeling of scattered nomads in their vans by depicting the protagonist Fern as a desolate, anti-social traveler-character who never takes roots, and thus other characters just come and go, and scenes also just come and go, as if they themselves are just “nomad-scenes” that refuse to take roots, but instead just randomly migrate across the film without a plot. The problem is that all this is not very cinematic, it is just a random series of vignettes which never connects as a whole on some more gratifying level.
At one point in the film, Fern is in trouble because her RV’s engine broke down, so she brings it to the auto mechanic. This could have been an important point in the film which could engage, since her basic life philosophy is under threat. But three to four scenes later, this is forgotten, and the movie just moves on. In another sequence, a woman tells about her cancer and how she has only a short amount of time to live. Does this play a role later on in the film? No. This is a major weakness. The entire film is just a collection of pretty looking scenes, but none of them have any weight or influence on the next set of scenes. As if it doesn’t matter whatever happens. And thus, the viewers cannot engage in this episodic storyline. Sadly, the movie is not memorable since nothing is going on, with only some moments standing out, such as Fern defecating in a bucket in her van or taking a shower at her work place. “Nomadland” has no humor, no excitement, no ingenuity, no spark, and is even scarce in emotions, turning into a peculiar, flat minimalistic existentialist art-film reduced to its essence: a person unable to connect to anyone. Unfortunately, despite an ambitious and intelligent constitution, Fern’s inability to connect spilled even over onto the viewers, who cannot connect with her.
Grade:++
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