It’s a weird year for movies, the strangest perhaps ever. A year in which movies have been more heard about than seen, in which they’ve gone underground, a few sent into theaters that almost no one is comfortable going to, or delayed and then delayed again, a year of festivals canceled or turned virtual, a year of films appearing on streaming services, where they actually can be seen but where they almost certainly aren’t—because they’ve joined a vast pool of boredom-mitigating content, from The Mandalorian to reruns of Friends to Bling Empire. (Be honest, have you actually seen any of these—very good—movies: One Night in Miami? Never Really Sometimes Always? Dick Johnson is Dead? Mank?)
And now we’re on the eve of an awards season that is meant to memorialize this movie year to forget, and at least judging from a bewildering list of Golden Globe nominees, it’s going to be as strange and forgettable as the year itself.
But: Nomadland. Can we clear some space for Nomadland? This miracle of a movie by Chloé Zhao, starring Frances McDormand and based on a book by the journalist Jessica Bruder, is almost certainly something you’ve heard about. Maybe you read Vogue’s January cover story of McDormand, in which she talked about how deeply she disappeared into the role of Fern, or maybe you’ve seen the welter of press on Zhao, a Chinese born director who somehow has made two of the most indelibly American movies of recent memory (this one and 2017’s lovely The Rider). Is it faint praise to call Nomadland the best movie of the year? It is that, by a lot. And now you can—you must—see it. Nomadland is available in theaters and on Hulu starting today.
I would tell you to watch it on as big a screen as you have, with as few distractions as you can manage—but I watched a screener on my iPad, with my young kids swirling around me, one weekend morning in the early months of lockdown and I still remember every frame. Nomadland is the story of a widow named Fern, who is left standing on the precipice of economic devastation and never quite falls off. Rather, she sets herself free by setting off in her van and living a vagabond existence across breathtaking American landscapes, meeting wholly earthbound and like-minded nomads (most of them non-actors) who offer a vision of an existence just about free of late capitalism, the Internet, political divisions, and really everything ailing us in 2021. It’s a patient, achingly lovely hymn to reinvention, escape, community, and a different kind of living.
And it’s a reminder that Frances McDormand is in an acting class of her own, able to communicate worry, resilience, loneliness, and the opposite—with a subtle gesture, a shift of expression, a set gaze. She is in every frame of Nomadland and carries you through the experience in the most intimate way. That is perhaps the strongest recommendation I can give this unforgettable movie from a forgettable year—that it offers company, a sense of closeness, a vision of life either before or after the one we’re living now.
Nomadland is available to stream on Hulu starting today.
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