Trail of Tears
“I am not homeless, I am houseless.”
-Fern, played by Frances McDermond, “Nomadland,” 2021 released film (Hulu) directed by Chloe Zhao and based on the book, “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-first Century,” by Jessica Bruder
Image courtesy of Vulture
“Nomadland” invites us to experience pain, grief, loss, fear, hunger, passion and as a bonus, the “American Nightmare.” Envision lots of great scenery and rural squalor.
“Nomadland” is an adventure on the journey to find our collective self. But not what “we” expect.
The factory town where Fern and her husband, Beau, worked and lived is abandoned due to a gypsum mine closure. Beau dies. Savings dry up and Fern, a sympathetic soul, stays on. In fact, this is what Fern does throughout the film, she stays on. Corporate America has abandoned Fern, but Fern, pursing her lips, refuses to abandon her memories and grief.
Following Fern in time and place is like re-knitting a new life. Her journey, as a friend observed, leads us full circle from the factory town of Empire, Nevada, now without a zip code, to Las Vegas, South Dakota, the Badlands, the Oregon coast, somewhere near Taos, and back to Empire, from where she finally walks away.
Fern and her van, named “Vanguard,” are always the last to leave the succession of parks, home to nomads, disposable humans, seeking community and the next Amazon warehouse gig. She and her sidekick, Swankie (who plays herself), seem to pop up unannounced, do a turn as itinerant “rec van hostesses,” in between Amazon gigs and disappear. Their relationship is built on departures and fossilized stones until the final departure: Swankie dies off screen like Beau and Fern is left behind…again.
Seeking answers to her well-established misery, Fern engages a van guru who explains that it is the van community and caring for its folk that keeps him alive and remembering his son, plucked from him early in life.
The film is populated with “sympaticos” who reach out to help. Fern brushes off their attempts: too many memories, too little time to be distracted by veiled erasure. “Time to move on,” is quietly and courageously resisted. The caravans depart, Fern stays behind, to wander and to unearth her memories.
To grieve solo. No bystanders please.
Therein lies the key to Fern’s survival, following her heart. Fern may be houseless; but unlike the world she finally abandons, Fern refuses heartlessness.
March 7
