Nomadland opens with the following text: “On January 31st, 2011, due to a reduced demand for sheetrock, US Gypsum shut down it’s plant in Empire, Nevada, after 88 years.” And that text hangs alone on the black screen giving us enough time to read it before the second line fades in: “By July, the Empire zip code, 89405, was discontinued.”
The film that unfolds thereafter follows Frances McDormand as Fern, a widow and former resident of Empire. Though she spent most of her working life at the US Gypsum plant in Empire, after her town was suddenly erased she chooses to live out of her “ratty” white van, chasing seasonal employment across the American west.
There are two powerful moments that stuck out to me that get at the heart of the film’s existential theme. The first is when the character Swankie is telling Fern (McDormand) about kayaking in Alaska. She describes this unbelievable scene of swallows nesting in cliffs suddenly emerging above her. The second moment happens towards the end of the movie when Fern is having a quasi-therapy session with the pastoral van dweller, Bob, who appears a few times throughout the movie.
Fern is talking about why she stayed in Empire after her husband passed away.
Bo never knew his parents and we never had kids. If I didn’t stay, if I left, it would be like he never existed.
Nomadland
It reminded me of an essay by Wright Thompson called, “Shadow Boxing.” The essay is included in a collection of his work I read this past December titled, The Cost of These Dreams. I suppose that’s appropriate.
In “Shadow Boxing,” Thompson is trying to track down James Robinson, a former boxer who went by the name, “Sweet Jimmy.” Sweet Jimmy may or may not have fought Muhammad Ali in Miami when Ali was still known as Cassius Clay. Near the beginning of the essay Thompson has a section titled, “The Paperless Trail.”
We all live parallel lives on paper.
Long after we’re gone, the details of our existence will remain part of the public record; in time, they will be all that’s known about us, a skeleton of facts, the human whys long decayed.
Wright Thompson, “Shadow Boxing.”
Fern carries this understanding with her after her husband passes, and she’s trapped by it. The town being wiped away makes her the sole carrier of his memory. Will he still exist in the public record long after she is gone? Will any of us?
Among the places Fern finds work throughout the movie are an Amazon fulfillment center and this industrial potato farm/plant. There is this striking dichotomy at play here. There is one shot in particular where Fern sits at the foot of a tremendous mound of potatoes. There are similar shots when she is working at Amazon and we see wide shots of the massive warehouse.
On one side of this economic equation, there is Fern and others like her living in vans and small campers. Everything they own within arms reach, pushed right up against the nervous system of their existence. On the other side, there are the people buying last minute Christmas gifts, and shoppers in Walmart not giving a second thought to the bag of Lays they pluck from the shelf.
While the Christmas shoppers and Lays eaters are on the other side of the consumer pipeline, we are no more immune to the sands of time than the nomads depicted in the film. We are just further removed. More insulated.
And I’m not entirely sure if this is an indictment of the economic super-system that lords over us all. The way the director, Chloe Zhao, puts the film together it’s more like a nature documentary where a camera is left passive in the woods. But because of where the camera is ‘left’ throughout Nomadland we see the residue that appears on the margins of our economy.
While this may all seem quite gloomy, there are parts inserted that change the message from, “we are all doomed to be forgotten,” to, “even though we’ll probably be forgotten, it is possible to transcend time and endure just a bit longer.” I mentioned the scene where Fern’s friend Swankie is kayaking in Alaska. But there is a more pointed moment that I think lends credence to my theory that this movie is about these existential questions and our persistence through time; and that is when Fern recites Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Wiliam Shakespeare, “Sonnet 18.”
Shakespeare basically gives time the middle finger. And including that in the film is a direct nod to its theme.
I have a feeling I will think about Fern’s husband for a long time. A man without parents or kids, whose town was removed from existence. I’ll think about him because I am him. We all are. Some of us will fade quicker, some will have statues erected in our honor or write sonnets, but before long we will likely all go the way of Ozymandias. And it’s good to remember that.
Lemmen's Nursery 