This past Sunday at the Golden Globes, Chloé Zhao became the first non-white woman (and the second woman in general) to win the award for Best Director for her indie film, “Nomadland”. Also nabbing the for Best Motion Picture - Drama, “Nomadland” is based on a nonfiction book called “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century” by Jessica Bruder, following the lives of older Americans who follow seasonal work and live out of vans, losing much to the Great Recession. The takes a fictional character from a real place and follows a year in her life of traveling and working through the West.
The film starts out with Fern at a storage facility, rifling through her belongings and adding things to her van, aptly named Vanguard, still tied to the extinct town of Empire, Nevada. She makes her way to the Amazon fulfillment center to work as a seasonal worker for the Christmas season. She is invited to go to Rubber Tramp Rendezvous in Quartzville, Arizona, and decides to leave Nevada when she is not able to find work. She learns skills to keep her self-sufficient on the road and travels around the American West, picking up work as it comes to her, while taking time to enjoy the nature around her. She experiences some setbacks as her van breaks down and she has to borrow money to fix it. Throughout, she seems slightly unsure of her new lifestyle, but her sister assures her that she has had an adventurer’s heart since she was young. Despite offers to settle down, Fern is constantly on the move, looking for more beautiful places and job opportunities as they arrive. In a very Virginia Woolf-esque fashion, Fern ends up returning to where she first started and leaving to restart her journey anew, along on the road.
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