Nomadland as Popurealism
Confronting the 'real' through popular appeal
Popurealism
After watching Nomadland, I went to Letterboxd and wrote the most condensed expression of what I thought the film was: Popurealism. To me it was a ‘realist’ film about a group of Boomer nomads given a pop-gloss. It attempts the neo-realist aesthetic production of non-actors and on-location filming, but unlike Roma città aperta or Ladri di biciclette, it retains a careful distance between subject and representation. Like the latter film, Nomadland is based off a 2017 book by Jessica Bruder with the same name but without the subtitle, Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, which is fitting, considering that if turned into a question of ‘how’, the film offers nothing new from what the annoying thumb of Individualism has been pressing for half a century: self-actualization through self-fulfillment.
Whereas the father in Ladri di biciclette struggles in his attempt to find a stolen bicycle in order to retain the livelihood of his family following the financial difficulties of a tumultuous era, the lone-wolf protagonist Fern (played by Frances McDormand) in Nomadland struggles in her attempt to retain the self-fulfilling nostalgic dream made with her late husband following the financial difficulties of a tumultuous era. In that crucial difference, Nomadland only continues to regurgitate the themes of a broken system (nostalgia, self-fulfillment, etc.) rather than offering a hope in overcoming struggles for a purpose beyond oneself.
Therefore in trying to popularize the realist aesthetic with shades of pseudo-humanity, the film deserves the Popurealism moniker. Although it geographically takes place in the West and goes for the Days of Heaven mood, it isn’t exactly a Neo-Western (notable examples being No Country for Old Men and Hell or High Water) because it neither comments on nor upends Western tropes. There are no questions of moral right/wrong at odds with civil order, nobody is requiring justice be served, and the characters are not exploring the frontiers between civilization and wilderness. Instead the characters closer resemble the marginalized indigenous groups pushed aside by the frontiersmen backed by the State. What we get is a group of elders that have been treated brutally by the Great Recession that find meaning in themselves as individuals on the road. These aren’t pioneers utilizing the frontier spirit of their ancestors but rather ancestral victims of a failing system.
In this way Nomadland is closer to the road narrative of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, also a semi-nonfiction, in its pursuit for meaning literally on the road, re: the Bob Wells slogan, “I’ll see you down the road.”
The part where a summary of the plot and production needs to be mentioned before I completely lose you
The entire film is McDormand doing random jobs and interacting with the other mostly real-life nomads. There come moments when a story arc tries to happen when McDormand’s character is enticed to be domesticated by co-star, and only other professional actor, David Strathairn, but she flees in keeping with the screenplay rule that one can never jump ship, especially after the mid-point decision-making pinnacle. In the end, the story is about McDormand overcoming a trauma through being content with loneliness, which the plot reconciles with her commitment to the nomadic lifestyle. In this way the nomads become a giant support group for one another.
Apart from McDormand and Strathairn, each of the actors played varied versions of themselves. Linda May as Linda, Swankie as Swankie, Bob Wells as Bob, etc. Although we occasionally receive their stories in bite-size chunks, they ultimately serve the purpose of bringing realism into the film’s confused (non?)fiction structure. In an interview for Sight & Sound, director Chloé Zhao was asked if including the real nomads “was a moral principle or prompted by the need for authenticity?” She responded:
First, I felt it was incredibly important for the van-dwellers to have a voice in the film. Jessica had done an incredible job in her book documenting these really colorful characters with interesting life experiences and also the worlds they exist in. It’s hard to recreate that kind of thing, as I learned from making my first two films, so using real people and places was always something we were going to do.
Considering McDormand appears in every scene of the film, the stories of the real-life van-dwellers are sprinkled around the edges rather than its main focus, as it is in the book. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad choice in and of itself but it downplays perhaps the most important aspect of the book, which is giving a voice to an interesting group of nomads with heartbreaking stories and shifts it to a fictional representation of a character that McDormand had, who as producer had optioned the book, supposedly been fantasizing about becoming for decades. This is rather strange to do for a film explicitly avoiding the romanticization of the nomadic lifestyle. And given all the choices Fern had in hitting the road or not, it obfuscates the fact that for many of the nomads, young and old alike, there was no choice. One Boomers displacement is another Millennials #vanlife I guess.
And Zhao’s other point regarding the same question:
Second, I asked myself, ‘How will a film like this catch the attention of people today?’ I was quite pragmatic about it. The idea of having a character, Fern, whose emotional arc would be something the audience could track throughout the film - and also having her be a listener and guide to this world - was very important to me.
This becomes the problem of adapting a nonfiction book into a fiction film, between presenting the real and representing it. The authenticity is taken away and replaced by a relatively privileged individual’s fantasy, but fortunately it doesn’t go into the realm of “a cosplay shell of A-list actors chewing rural scenery.” The film will continue to win awards, McDormand and Zhao will continue to be lauded, but the individuals and their situations that the story is about will be forgotten, or worse, continually co-opted. After all, Swankie never had cancer and is still on the road while Linda May settled down in New Mexico.
Armchair Marxist Critique
While the film is obviously not, nor should be, going for a capitalist critique or epic Amazon takedown, it’s nonetheless suspiciously devoid of politics considering the story is inherently political. It opts more for the slice-of-life humanitarian portrayal. Like a surgeon, Zhao, who received a BA in political science, carefully removes the deeply rooted politics of the Great Recession that the book goes into some detail about. In it, a few of the seasonal Amazon employees talk about their negative experiences. One of the 77 year old nomads claimed that “they love retirees because we’re dependable. We’ll show up, work hard, and are basically slave labor.”
In the film, Fern puts some tape on a box and listens to another worker talk about their tattoos. Amazon is portrayed rather decently and is implied to be the best of all her temporary jobs when asked by others about her financial situation. Zhao said that she didn’t want the film to be political but fails to represent the reason why all these nomads lost their livelihoods and many of their welfare benefits. It continually returns to Fern finding her true self: “Fern does this menial labor to remain true to herself and the life she wants to lead, and Amazon essentially funds her authenticity.” Zhao didn’t have to use her Amazon warehouse center filming access to expose their widely exposed dirty linens, but in order to stay true to the nomads who are authentically struggling, neither should she portray the company as Fern’s once-a-year financial savior. It distracts from the reality in a way that makes it seem that Zhao agreed to not portray Amazon’s negatives in exchange for insider access and positions herself as corporate friendly. On an unrelated note, Zhao directed Disney’s Marvel’s upcoming film, Eternals.
Which brings me back to the term Popurealism: Zhao takes a social realist story and gives it an accessibility (“…catch the attention of people…”) and mainstream quality that will be relatively tame when it comes to condemning institutions and the structures of power that led to the consequences of what we’re watching. It’ll become part of the film awards elite because it successfully played the game.