If so, #Nomadland is for sure, one masterpiece of a “movie”.
Watch this beautiful poetry of a film that moves you from the first scene to the last, as the protagonist Fern (Francis McDormand) herself moves from one place to another, along with her moving “home” - her prized and only possession, where she now belongs, her van.
I wish I could have seen this movie in the theatres because that’s where it’s meant to be seen, and heard, and felt.
A movie that invites you into a world that, just like Fern, you didn’t know could exist, but that soon becomes the only world that could possibly exist. A world that becomes a counterpoint to the one which we modern-day urbanites call normal. In that sense, Nomadland challenges “Normal-land” and forces us to ask the question, what’s normal about modern-day urban living, anyway. The Verve 90s classic Bitter-sweet symphony ringing in my ears “Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life… Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die”. A world we have created that binds us to our possessions, things we buy and consume, till they are over, starting the cycle of buying and consuming all over again, and again. Till these things consume us and we leave them behind, once it’s time to say goodbye.
What if we broke this cycle while we still have life left in us, while we still can. What if we gave up these ‘things’ in our life that hold us back, bog us down, trap us into believing that they give us happiness. Will we experience true freedom then? Can we experience this liberation during our lifetime, before the end? Before it’s too late? Hasn’t this what the pandemic really taught us. To stop. To pause. To step back. "It really is enough", says the wise old bat flying away in the sky.
It really isn’t normal-land, my dear fellow human beings.
Welcome to Nomadland, where being “house-less” doesn’t mean the same as being “home-less”.
Based on real events detailed out in the non-fiction book of the same name by Jessica Bruder, Nomadland gets it right with its almost-documentary style telling of the story of Fern, and her life after she loses everything when the town she has lived all her life shuts down, as the biggest corporation of the city goes under. Losing her husband and her city, she is forced to set out in a van-turned-into-home around America, where she meets like-minded people, makes friends, and discovers a whole new way of living, where the word ‘settling down’ takes the new meaning of ‘moving on'.
While the film shows a mirror to our times, it equally opens a window to another choice of life. That’s the beauty of this movie. Of the window, that when you open becomes a door of possibilities, of seeing what the world and people could be, and perhaps should be. In that, contrary to what it might seem at first, the oscar-winning Normadland is an optimistic movie, a feel-good movie, a movie with hope, a movie with life.
As always (and once again winning the oscar) Francis McDormand does a fabulous job of portraying her complex character, vulnerable-yet-proud, independent yet craving someone in her life, missing her past but ready for her future, anxious about letting go, yet knowing that that is her truth, anchored by the love for her now-dead husband yet happy to be free of that very anchor that held her back. We see Fern grow through the course of the film, finding her way of life, the life that she never knew was hers to live, and yet a life that somehow she always knew was hers to live. The beautiful turning point in the film is when she commits to her new life after she rejects her wanderer-friend’s offer to stay with him in his comfortable, idyllic country home.
Well deserved Oscar for Chloe Zhao, the director, who manages to create the fine balance between real-life documentary and storytelling with deep emotions. The soul-moving music by composer, Ludovico Einaudi, lifts the film and completes this emotional experience powerfully.
Since it’s an experience movie, not a plot movie, watch it when you have that mind-space at home, and let the movie take over. Not one to watch while multi-tasking on your phone on social media!
In that sense, a perfect Covid era film that takes social distancing to a whole new level, as Fern distances herself from many things of the world, and gets closest to the one thing that matters the most, herself.
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