This week's TV: Nomadland is a masterpiece that sent me to bed with a smile on my face
Frances McDormand in the film NOMADLAND. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2020 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.
That dire Line of Duty finale has to be a turning point. Just because loads of people are talking about you on Twitter doesn’t make it right. The big reveal was a pedestrian cop-out, a fitting end for a tired old series. I don’t know about you, but I’d gladly swap a series that should have stopped after season 3 for 140 minutes of really good telly.
So we watched Nomadland on Disney+. I was wary because there was talk that its haul of Oscar awards was just virtue-signaling by the lefty luvvies in the movie industry, who got off on its theme of inequality and broken America. And yes, Frances McDormand’s character, Fern, ends up homeless and living in a camper van in her 60s, working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. But that’s just the background.
Because Nomadland is really a poem about grief. It’s like one of those amazing poems you did for the Leaving Cert, that lured you in even as you dissected it for theme and tone and other rubbish. We watched it in silence, entranced by Frances McDormand’s Fern's barely disguised sadness following the death of her husband. Losing her home and heading off across America for a rough life on the road didn’t seem to bother her that much — that was nothing compared to life without her soulmate.
Another movie would have fixed this in some way — Fern would have found closure somehow and left us feeling good about ourselves. Not here. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, but then I can’t because there isn’t one. As anyone who has experienced grief will tell you, it never really goes away.
And still, Nomadland is life affirming. McDormand, who produced the movie, and the director, Chloe Zhao, have kick-started a new genre here called docu-fiction. So alongside a few professional actors, you’ll find real-life people who live on the road in America — and not only that, they live meaningfully. They buzz in and out of each other’s lives, meeting up in isolated and cheap trailer parks before heading off their separate ways again. One of them, Bob Wills, is like a counsellor, talking to Fern about her grief and his own, following the death of his son by suicide.
Another nomad, Swankie, plays a character on the road to Alaska, for one last kayak with the swallows before cancer takes her away. Her story is a sad delight.
Fern is offered a bed and a home by both her sister and a nice guy called Dave who fancies her in his own gentle way. I won’t tell you which or any of them she takes, because that’s the only bit of ‘what happens’ really in the show. But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what happened before the movie began, and Fern’s husband passed away. Nomadland is a masterpiece, a gorgeous portrait that sent me to bed with a smile on my face.
It might be time to ease off on the six-season box-sets for a while. I’m going to start watching the odd movie again.
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