Nomadland                        4 ½ stars

Chloe Zhao’s movie Nomadland is likely not for everyone but is one that I found to be fascinating. The 2020 film stars Francis McDormand as Fern, a 60ish woman who finds herself jobless, a widow and without a home after spending much of her life working in a small Nevada town at a US Gypsum factory that closed its doors after 88 years. Like the factory, Fern is a casualty of the Great Recession and must find a new path in life. With only a van and her few possessions that she can pack inside, she adopts the life of many of her generation and becomes a nomad and travels from one campground to another picking up service jobs at tourist attractions and plants. (Some viewers may recognize sights from the famous Wall Drug.) Everywhere she finds a community of fellow nomads who cooperate with one another and are willing to help with her needs. The movie is about many things really, about loss, about finding fellowship and comfort from fellow humans and of course about the beauty of the American West and the Plains. Chloe Zhao not only wrote and directed the movie, but also produced and edited it as well. While not a western, Nomadland has much in common with her earlier work, The Rider as that movie dealt with a young cowboy losing his loved profession and included some remarkable cinematic filming. Many of the characters were portrayed by nonprofessional actors playing fictional versions of themselves, people who society has left behind and travel wherever opportunity takes them. As Fern says, they are not homeless, just houseless. The movie is very low on plot relying instead on the characters, the camera work and the score to make a real masterpiece. Nomadland is nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and could very well pick up both Oscars.