There are no words to adequately describe how perfect this movie is.
It's a poignant, sometimes haunting...but always beautiful and hopeful elegy of loss, closure, remembrance, honoring others, and saying "I'll see you down the road" versus "Goodbye."
Frances McDormand is so authentic, so real...and the fact that the movie utilizes so many other 'genuine' human beings is a testament to the truth that a worthy story—well told—doesn't need any bells and whistles to be effective. On the contrary, Nomadland is so dang great because it is so honest, so plain, so simple, so unadorned and unornamented. I love that, really love that.
David Strathairn (and his actual son Tay, and what might as well be other Strathairns, too) is perfectly cast, though Frances could just about carry this film solo.
She really is that good, and so is the narrative that powers her tribespeople.
I also tip my hat to Jessica Bruder's original Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, brought to life here so terrifically by Chloé Zhao. Jessica clearly did her homework, and Chloé is a master of tone. The film oozes 'Sundance,' and if you haven't seen Zhao's prior pics (2015's Songs My Brothers Taught Me and 2017's The Rider), load 'em up in your queue now. They are every bit as moving.
In summary: Drop whatever you're doing when able and see it. I guarantee you'll appreciate it, and all the more in light of what has been an echo-recession to 2008's gully washer, this latest reverberation brought to you in part by Coronavirus and other natural and unnatural disasters.
