I watched the movie Nomadland the day before it won the 2021 Academy Award for best picture.
Merely watching the picture was itself a momentous event—the first time I’ve publicly attended a move in more than a year. Our local movie theater recently re-opened to masked, socially distanced audiences. I attended a matinee exclusively for those patrons vaccinated for the Coronavirus.
Frances McDormand, who won best actress in the awards, played a widow, living a fairly normal life until the main employer in her small town shuts down, and the town begins to die.
An employment official says her best choice is to go on early social security. McDormand says she can’t make it on the reduced benefits. “I only want to work,” she says, voicing the cry of so many of today’s unemployed.
So McDormand, in her small van, joins other rootless men and women who, for one reason or another, cannot find a place in mainstream America.
The movie did not have a villain, so far as I could see. Not Amazon, where McDormand finds seasonal employment to help her get by. Not the woman who nervously tells McDormand that she can stay the night in a store parking lot and mentions that a nearby Baptist church offers food. Even a policeman ordering McDormand off a public space, is I suppose, merely doing what he’s paid for.
McDormand wants to support herself. She works seasonal jobs and travels in between, sometimes stopping for a while to stay with other nomads, sometimes seeming to enjoy the solitariness of camping alone.
I was touched by the precarious existence of so many in America, no matter whether they remain stationary or travel around.
Bank accounts? Medical emergencies? Vehicle breakdowns? The simple need for bathroom facilities?
Others with more expertise perhaps can offer solutions. I only know that simple human kindness requires that we seek ways to help the non-belongers find a place in their country.
I too saw Nomadland and thought it was a very timely look at the plight of so many in our country. I was struck by the kindness that these “nomads” have for each other in an America that is becoming more and more polarized. I liked the movie, and of course Frances McDormand is a truly gifted actress.
The movie began with the closing of an industry that was the lifeblood of the small town where McDormand’s character lived. So many one-industry towns are in the same situation. Yet, many jobs can now be done remotely. My son lives in a small town in east Tennessee and works remotely, traveling occasionally into Atlanta for consultations. Of course, big cities have advantages, too—face-to-face meetings and a certain vibrancy lacking elsewhere, despite problems with homelessness and crime. Perhaps we need the variety of both small towns and big cities.