Nomadland Review – Stunning or Just Meh?

By the messy optimist

By the time I got around to watching Nomadland – the reviews were out and everyone raved about it. Did I feel the same? Was it a bravura stunning portrayal of nomads on the roads or was it just meh?

Keep reading to find out!

But first – before I sat down to watch Nomadland – I felt like a bit of a Debbie Downer and Nagging Nellie. After my review of The White Tiger – which admittedly – did not blow me away as I thought it would, as I HOPED it would…I went into watching both Nomadland and Minari with a sense of…I don’t know – maybe trepidation? I was hopeful and hoping – both at the same time – that I would fall in love with both films but also extremely worried that like my experience with The White Tiger both would leave me a bit underwhelmed.

I saw Nomadland first. And I was so excited to watch it. I’d never heard of Chloe Zhao before but after I did some digging on her on google I read so many wonderful things about her first two films Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider (both of which I’ll try and watch soon) before and then the buzz around Nomadland was starting to build – I was beyond excited. As a woman director in my previous life – I LOVE when a woman director makes it. And if she is also a Woman of Color (WOC) like Zhao – I know the struggle is twice as hard and – so – my hopes and dreams for said person is more than the normal levels.

Also, the level of championing that a brilliant Frances McDormand did for Zhao and the script and the final making of the film also added my desire to see and be floored by Nomadland.

Unfortunately, for me, that did not happen.

The movie is a very solid effort. The story of displacement – both mentally and physically that McDormand’s character feels is something that that all of us can connect to. Owning a home and a car and a mortgage and other classic parts of the American dream is nowhere near as reachable a goal for people these days as it used to be. And when McDormand’s character who lived and worked her entire adult life in a small mining town in Nevada – only for the mine to shut down because the product (sheetrock) has no market anymore – and finds herself out of a job, a home, a husband who dies and also a zipcode that is taken away – the displacement is both figurative and literal.

When McDormand says, “I’m houseless, not homeless,” we want to believe her.

There is a sense of romanticism to McDormand’s Fern’s life on the road. She has ‘done up her van’ to make it seem like home. when Zhao shows us Fern and the other nomads’ lives on the road against the breathtaking background landscapes that encompasses blue waters and orange sunrise and sunsets and majestic wild animals – we almost want to pack up and get on the road ourselves.

And when McDormand finds a community of folks like herself – displaced but happy and fulfilled to live their lives out of their vans and cars – there’s a sense of deep satisfaction within us. We follow in awe as these nomads in the cars and trucks and RVs and move from one camp ground to another, from one RV stop to another. They consider the road their actual home and find they’re best suited to life as nomads and it makes us sigh with envy.

Oh – if only we could do the same, we think.

But of course – the morning comes and we make our way to our bathrooms to do our business and are grateful to have the comfort of our kitchens and our beds – and that wistful yearning soon goes away.

But for that moment – we feel McDormand and we connect. And that’s Zhao’s biggest triumph with the movie. That and the supporting characters (including Bob Wells whose YouTube videos on van dwelling are a must-see if you haven’t already) are absolutely sublime.

My concern with the movie is not that it’s bad or boring or that it speaks of a topic that the average person cannot connect to. It’s that there are no serious highs or lows in the movie. There are some incredible characters in the film. And there are some really intense moments in the film as well. But there is nothing in the film – not the story, not the performances (especially of McDormand), not the music, not the cinematography – that really feels spectacular. It’s just a normal and ordinarily nice film.

Maybe the fact that I’m a HARDCORE Van-Life lover and DEVOUR the Van Life, the RV life videos on YouTube is part of the problem. There are people like me – we are such hardcore fans of the Van Life movement – of the small-scale living movement that we watch every good, bad and ugly video on YouTube. And honestly, it’s really going down a rabbit hole because once you start watching and following people who live that lifestyle on YouTube – there’s no f…ing going back.

I can bet anything that Zhao is one of them as well and that’s where this idea came up for her. Oh, no. Wait a second – she adapted it from Jessica Bruder’s book Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century. I bet she devoured those YouTube videos after she signed on to the movie.

The reason I bring this up is because there is NOTHING you see on Nomadland that I haven’t seen someone say / do / be on the Van Life movement on YouTube. Every word spoken by characters in the movie – I have seen some say that on these videos. So there was no aha moment in the film for me. There was no gotcha moment for me. I already knew about this movement and knew about the people who are part of the movement. Maybe that’s what made the whole experience just ‘nice’ for me instead of what I hoped the movie would do for me – which is blow my mind.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m still beyond thrilled at all the traction the movie has gotten. and Zhao has gotten and I hope the film and Zhao ride it all the way to Oscar glory.

Here’s hoping!

My review of Minari coming up soon.