The search for meaning

I was in Montana for a few days many years ago. I remember thinking to myself that when people called it "Big Sky country", they were right. The openness and the emptiness seemed to go farther than any other place I've seen. "Emptiness" doesn't have to mean "barren", though. There was life everywhere. It was just about looking for it in the right spots. This, to me, seems to be a central element to Chloé Zhao's film, Nomadland. From a certain perspective, the film is about emptiness. But it's a desired emptiness- a desired solitude -that the protagonist, Fern (the perfectly cast Frances McDormand) basically requires in order to live her life the way she is compelled to do.

Except for two sentences on a card at the beginning about the circumstances of the dissolution of Empire, NV, the story is told without any preamble and there are none of the normal setup cues, in which characters are introduced and some of their history and/or motivation are put on display. We're just dropped into the action and compelled to follow along with wherever Fern is going (I've often referred to this as the 'Howard Chaykin approach', after one of my favorite comic authors.) We only slowly learn the details of Fern's life before her current wandering, but all of her reality is written on McDormand's wonderfully-expressive face and in the matter-of-fact process by which she conducts her existence; traveling from job to job and gathering to gathering, making just enough to keep her and her van moving. She is the very essence of a nomad within the larger shell of the society that surrounds her. That society is pointedly demonstrated by Zhao with the long shots of an Amazon warehouse, a South Dakota national park, and a beet processing facility in Nebraska. We see the remnants of that society when she returns to the hollowed out remains of Empire and her former life. We see the open spaces that she yearns for on the California coast, the Badlands rocks, and the Black Rock Desert just past her former back yard in Empire.

Other than the capable David Strathairn, many of the rest of the nomad community that Fern interacts with are actual members of that community currently on the road in this country. Fittingly, most of them are there by choice, having not found what they wanted in that larger society. That's appropriate for McDormand, who often plays characters with tragedy hovering over them but with steel in their spines that won't let them be overcome by it. And, as usual, you can see every figment of that perspective on her face without her having to utter a word. Despite losing her long-time husband and her home, we later discover that she only stayed in Empire in the first place so that he, a man without parents or children, wouldn't be forgotten if she moved on. It's that sense of responsibility to the people around her that makes her a solid fit for the nomad community, who are made up of people just like that; presence remembered and given life by the people they associate with, whether they're actually present or not. Zhao does an excellent job of portraying that presence, those living memories, without allowing the story to become maudlin.  No matter how often she's presented with offers to stay with people who care for her, Fern can't bring herself to do it, as the solitude is the only thing that brings her respite from the memory of what she's lost and, mostly, what she's never found.

Tricia said she found the movie to be depressing and I can see why someone would think that. But I think that, despite the obvious pain and the struggle, the point was, in fact, the journey. It was predicted by a former student of Fern's whom she ran into in a store who, when asked if she remembered anything that Fern had taught her, recited one of my favorite bits from Macbeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

It may seem depressing to those who can't understand the need for the solitude that the road and the life provides and it may seem as if it signifies nothing to simply keep moving and leave behind all the connections that most people feel help make them who they are. But Fern and the people like her feel that they don't fit into that model of society and it's better for them to escape the petty pace and keep finding new candles to light their way.