By Ezra Haber Glenn

Fern may be houseless, but she’s not homeless — there’s a difference, she explains; her home will be the road, and the road is full of life, love, challenges, and surprises, all there for the taking.

Frances McDormand as Fern in Nomadland.

In the same year you got your license, you saw Easy Rider at the drive-in and were turned on by Canned Heat singing “Going Up the Country” at Woodstock, followed by a steady diet of “Going Mobile,” “Going to California,” and counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. The highway was calling and you rose to answer — but then life intervened, with a husband and a mortgage and a job at the gypsum plant and shopping lists and gutters to clean and 1,001 other daily responsibilities and hassles, and being on the road was just something Willie Nelson would sing about on the jukebox.

And then like that, decades later, with a whoosh of the undertow and a great sucking sound, the plant closed and the bottom dropped out of the world and everything that was once stable evaporated – husband, job, house, community – and all that was left was you and the road again.

And then, most surprisingly of all, along came a 38-year old film director (born in China, no less, and who is incongruously also directing the latest installment in the Marvel-movie franchise) who managed to capture the pathos of your generation as you rediscovered your mobile roots and reclaimed life on the highway, lost and found on that road, adrift on an ocean of asphalt, tiptoeing at the end of time and the end of America.

Pulling up over the horizon on our nation’s favorite myth — the “finding yourself on the road” movie — Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland serves as a solemn and meditative bookend for a generation that began life on the road, or at least dreamed of it. Based on Jessica Bruder’s 2014 feature in Harper’s, “The End of Retirement,” and her subsequent 2017 book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the film employs an almost-documentary framing to tell the story of Fern (Frances McDormand), a 60-something widow who wakes one morning to find herself alone, unrooted, and aimless. Her husband is dead, as is her entire community. As the opening titles inform us, in 2011, “due to reduced demand for sheetrock, US Gypsum shut down its plant in Empire, Nevada, after 88 years.” The economic shock of the closing — part of a series of related cracks and failures cascading throughout the American economy in a decade defined by the Great Recession — led to the death of the entire town and even the disbanding of the 89405 zip-code: quite literally, we are witnessing the end of Empire.

But unlike Easy Rider — or even a perhaps more fitting, Depression-era road movie, The Grapes of Wrath — Fern does not set off in search of much, or with much hope. She simply moves on, a modern-day nomad like so many uprooted and leftover people, the flotsam and jetsam of late-stage capitalism looking down a pretty bleak road: when you’re over 60, without a steady job, and living in a van, it’s not clear where you might be headed. But not seeking does not mean not finding: Zhao’s film — and Fern’s journey — is far from desolate. She may be houseless, but she’s not homeless — there’s a difference, she explains; her home will be the road, and the road is full of life, love, challenges, and surprises, all there for the taking.

For one thing, Fern finds work, typically seasonal, always temporary: as a shipping packer helping with the Christmas rush at an Amazon distribution center; a summer gig as a campground host in the Badlands, gathering litter and cleaning toilets; and then, as summer fades to fall, heading off to work the Nebraska beet harvest. Despite the broader economic collapse, the US economy still finds opportunities to convert desperation into cheap labor and an intermittent paycheck. (Instead of the more romantic “nomad,” most economists would refer to Fern as a “migrant worker.”)

Frances McDormand and David Straitharn, in Nomadland.

But woman does not live by bread alone, and so — more importantly — Fern finds both community and friendship. Falling in with other nomads, she discovers an entire nation on wheels, a loose cult of devotees to the gospel of the road, and, as we learn, followers of the teachings of real-world “VanDwelling” evangelist Bob Wells. These characters — mostly played by people living this life, including Wells in a generous supporting role — fill out the cast. These cameos bring a sense of realism to the film, and it’s refreshing to see so much gray — and so many actual crags and wrinkles — in a big-budget feature. (With his white beard and calm, sensitive manner, Wells comes off like a sweet New Age guru of the “we are all stardust” variety; a bit schmaltzy perhaps, but true to life.)

Fern catches up with this crowd at the “Rubber Tramp Rendezvous” (or RTR, sort of like Woodstock crossed with Burning Man for mobile retirees), where she learns the tricks of the trade and is inducted into the church of radical self-reliance. At times, in their eagerness to share what they know, these scenes border on short “how-to” films. We learn the ins and outs of converting your own van, finding safe places to park for the night, or pooping in a 10-gallon bucket. Given the ingenuity involved, the instruction time is forgivable. (And hey: if The Martian can spend 45 minutes explaining how to synthesize water from hydrazine fuel, what’s wrong with learning to fix a tire while we meditate on the vast American West?)

Though they are largely poor — and generally committed to traveling light — we begin to recognize exchange as a core value for this nomadic culture: “swapping” seems to be their default mode, whether it’s stories, advice, crafts, tools, or other small items being traded. Through these small interactions, though, much more than just words or trinkets are exchanged: as observed by sociologist Marcel Mauss nearly 100 years ago in The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, giving — and receiving — is a fundamental process that knits our social fabric together in ways that legal contracts, monetary payments, and work-for-hire can never do. Thankfully, the film steers away from anything too obviously preachy or pat in its political analysis, with two notable exceptions: one short sermon by Wells, channeling classic 2016-era Bernie; and a short visit to see how the other half lives (apparently high on the hog, rich on the misery of others because of real estate speculation: think 99 Homes meets The Big Short).

The one concession Zhao makes to fitting the story within a more conventional Hollywood plot is the inclusion of a potential love interest, and so we meet Dave (David Strathairn). From a swap meet meet-cute at the RTR (she trades a homemade potholder for his used can opener), to the (what a coincidence!) second-chance chance meeting at a campground two states over, the two connect and a friendship is born. She helps him through a period of illness, but once back on his feet he succumbs to the gravity of a stable house with his adult son, providing the necessary ounce of dramatic tension one imagines was added to green-light an otherwise non-plot-driven script.

Strathairn’s performance is solid, but perhaps the most impressive aspect is his willingness to get out of the way, allowing McDormand the cinematic space to develop a closeness with her character as she tries to sort out her life. It is a slow and murky process that is given time to settle in and feel real. By foregrounding Fern and downplaying Dave, Zhao — decidedly, unapologetically — aces the Bechdel Test: not every story about a woman needs to be about a woman thinking about a man.

This shift also allows McDormand’s true costar to emerge: the landscape. Zhao has a real knack for capturing both real people and real places, from the epic to the mundane. And so, in addition to the craggy faces and worn expressions of the real-life nomads, we spend ample time getting to know the craggy faces and worn vistas of the Western desert and the Badlands — as well as other worn and broken locations littered across the West, from cafeterias, gas stations, and roadside rock-shops to that ultimate evocation of loneliness: the fluorescent-flickering late-night coin-op laundromat. (The film also perfectly conveys feelings of harsh and bitter weather, which are crucial to remind us what it means to drive through a prairie rainstorm or sleep in an unheated van in a Dakota winter; and, of course, no one can capture that “hands-in-pockets hunch-your-shoulders” cold like McDormand.)

One oversight should be noted regarding diversity and representation: despite featuring a strong female story and showcasing many nonstereotypical, true-to-life older people, its hard to imagine a film about migrant labor that doesn’t also include people of color, who are by far overrepresented in the industries where Fern finds work. One short testimonial from a Black VanDweller, and a brief encounter with a polite Latino father throwing a sweet campground birthday party for his cute daughter, provide the only exceptions, and they both feel tacked on, expressly for the purpose of responding to this sort of criticism. (That said, there are some nice moments which bridge the age gap and connect the “beards-and-crowsfeet” retiree nomads with the younger tattoos-and-piercings dropout tribe who will inherit this lifestyle, including a poignant swapping of a cigarette lighter — a metaphorical “passing of the torch” to the younger generation.)

As we move into the final act, time accelerates, providing some of the best visual storytelling of the film: another year passes, reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s impressionistic Tree of Life. We see Fern continue to move ahead — another season, another campsite, another Amazon gig, another laundromat. Has she found freedom, or just a more mobile sort of grind? Your answer to this elemental question will depend on the perspective you take on your own journey through time.

Peg Aloi‘s commentary on the “nomad” subculture.

Nomadland received a limited-release in December, allowing it to qualify for the upcoming Oscars, where it’s sure to be noticed; it’s scheduled for wider distribution starting in February, 2021. (For those interested in learning more about the real-world story behind the film, Bruder’s book has also been adapted as a documentary short directed by Brett Story, called CamperForce.)

Ezra Haber Glenn is a Lecturer in MIT’s in the Department of Urban Studies & Planning, where he teaches a special subject on “The City in Film.” His essays, criticism, and reviews have been published in the New York Observer, CityLab, the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Statistical Software, Experience Magazine, The Arts Fuse, and Next City, and he is the regular film reviewer for Planning magazine. Follow him on UrbanFilm and @UrbanFilmOrg.