As Nomadland reflects current America it focuses on the massive underclass that has been increasingly marginalized, impoverished, i.e., the people that the Republicans promise to serve by giving the wealthy their huge tax breaks. Perhaps only an immigrant woman like China's Chloe Zhao could grab such a trenchant insight.
The opening title cites the annihilation of a sheetrock-based town called Empire. The town died when its industry died. No government aid came to the rescue. Even the mail zip code evaporated. Fern and dead hubby Bo loved Empire, from their house on the edge of town with an uninterrupted vista of the desert. Then life on the edge was idyllic. Before the sheetrock died.
Of course when even a real item steps into a fiction it transforms into potential metaphor. Hence this microcosm — America as Empire has collapsed.
Why sheetrock? It’s a basic element in construction, a mix of paper and gypsum, of the ephemeral and the stable. Absent this fundament of construction the society disintegrates. So Fern drifts among the uprooted, finding there the community denied her in “normal” society.
Why “Fern”? The name evokes an essential vegetation, an outline of foliage, but a sprig of life against that landscape of rock. The desert has lost its foliage. Kid sister Dolly remembers Fern’s bravery and insightfulness — the hole she left Dolly when she left. “That one’s on me,” Fern admits.
The narrative is framed by Fern’s work at Amazon. That's the new “empire” of American commerce, the monster that is replacing the community of small local retailers, basing its bargains on more exploitation.
As it refers to the community of wanderers, “Nomadland” is also a variation on No-mans-land, in two senses. It’s not the space between two conflicting parties but the national cost of the class war in America. That’s less a war than a tyranny.
The term also de-genders the original. The most moving testimonies come from women — Swankie, Merle, Linda, with Fern our figure of identification and entrance. Gender is no issue here. There is no sexual tension or threat. The one possibility of romance — suitably performed by the two prominent pros amid the effective amateurs — stays platonic. The odd beard apart, aging and poverty make it hard to discern the gender.
Frances McDormand plays Fern as a sentient but wholly de-romanticised woman. Her skin is as dry as the desert, with saving fertility in her feeling eyes and smile. Her bowel scenes frame her de-romanticising of the usual heroine — and of the mythic American Dream for women.
While the women embody courage and generosity, the organizer of the RV community, Bob, has the traditional patriarchal emblems of Mosaic mane, beard and rhetoric. As the poor are always with us Bob can confidently say “I’ll see you down the road.” Given their narrowed range of mobility, the poor will meet again, especially when this confidence embraces the afterlife. That’s how the group see off their dead.
Bob’s purpose is to rescue the workers the society has exploited and abandoned: “The way I see it is that the Titanic is sinking and economic times are changing. And so my goal is to get the lifeboats out and get as many people into the lifeboats as I can.”
The lifeboat image echoes Merle’s coworker Bill, who worked too late to enjoy retirement on his sailboat: “So I retired as soon as I could. I didn't want my sailboat to be in the driveway when I died. So... yeah. And it's not. My sailboat is out here in the desert.” The image of sailing on the desert encapsulates their hopelessness — and their saving dream, community.
In contrast to the unregulated capitalism that has reduced them, these nomads are mutually supportive, generous within their maximal limits. Their “business” is giving or bartering. The people who have virtually nothing exemplify what the people who grab everything might consider … trying — to share the nation’s wealth. To serve the common weal.
The film benefits hugely from its largely nonprofessional cast, using their own names. Swankie’s reminiscence of epiphanies — the moose, the little white swallows on the water — feel like memories that could not be scripted. Thoughts of her dogs pulled Linda back from suicide. This is life bursting free from someone else’s script, as the townsfolk and Empire could not.
Then there’s the paradox of “real” estate. As Fern points out, “It’s strange that you encourage people to invest their whole life savings, go into debt, just to buy a house they can't afford.” This may offend the real estate agents in the house, but it feeds Fern’s distinction that she is not “homeless” but “houseless.” She has a larger home than the sheetrock can define, as she acknowledges a larger community than herself.
The paralyzing class structure echoes in the breakdown of families. Bo didn’t have parents. He and Fern didn’t have kids. But the basic unit of connection is where hope lies. Dave (actor David Strathairn) returns to the family he abandoned. Having failed as a father he takes Fern’s instruction: ”Go be a grandfather.” A timely, substantial “loan” from Dolly saves Fern’s house/home.
In these examples of mutual support the personal connotes the national. America has forgotten the promise of its Empire -- equality in citizenship and opportunity, a refuge from the foreign tyrannies and injustices. That’s the resonance of Fern’s explanation why she stayed in Bo’s beloved Empire after he died: “He loved being there, everybody loved him. So I stayed. Same town, same house. Just like my dad used to say: ‘What's remembered lives.’ I maybe spent too much of my life just remembering, Bob.”
America’s key forgetting is the loss of her defining ideals. This is how Dolly explains her vagrant sister: “You know, I think that what the nomads are doing is not that different than what the pioneers did. I think Fern's part of an American tradition.” Fern is what America was when it was a dream of freedom, equality, a supportive community of independents. Before the Empire died. Before sheetrock became its only concept of construction.
