Fern, however, is a fictional character, sutured into the landscape by Zhao and McDormand to be our compassionate, dryly humorous, Shakespeare-reciting guide to the nomadic world. The idea of authenticity has been core to Zhao’s previous films, which were developed around the real-life stories of her cast of mostly non-professional actors she imports this technique to Nomadland, featuring actual nomads from Bruder’s book, including Linda May and Swankie. But Zhao’s adaptation, which follows Fern as she drives through majestic landscapes in the American west picking up temporary employment, is only superficially the same narrative.Īlready an Oscar favorite, many critics have praised Nomadland as a portrait of modern America. So when 60-something protagonist Fern (Frances McDormand) rolls up in an old white van to work at a real Amazon warehouse in the first three minutes of Nomadland, director Chloé Zhao’s fictional film adaptation of Bruder’s book, we are tensed for class conflict. Reading Bruder, we understand that these “accidents” are the logical outcomes of an economic system that takes advantage of the country’s most vulnerable.

We’ll show up, work hard, and are basically slave labor.” On jobs that are physically difficult, many are too tired even to socialize after their shifts.” As one 77-year-old worker told her: “They love retirees because we’re dependable. They bring their own homes … They aren’t around long enough to unionize. They appear where and when they are needed. He died.īruder describes the nomads as “plug-and-play labor, the epitome of convenience for employers in search of seasonal staffing. While staffing an amusement park, Steve Booher, 68, fell from a loading platform and onto a conveyor belt, fracturing his skull.

While working as a campground host in California, Linda May broke a rib while bear-proofing a dumpster Charlene Swankie, 72, cracked three ribs while campground-hosting in the Rockies. The nomads didn’t get hurt only at Amazon. Another CamperForce worker, 71-year-old Chuck Stout was knocked flat by a box that flew off the conveyor belt at Amazon, his head hitting the concrete floor with a thud moments later, in-house medics had him back on his feet, declared he didn’t have a concussion, and sent him back to work. A seasonal worker at CamperForce, Amazon’s jobs program for van-dwelling retirees, she experienced dizziness during her shifts at the Amazon warehouse that landed her in the emergency room and got a repetitive motion injury from using her scanner gun. She met elderly Americans across the country who were living out of vehicles to save their meager Social Security benefits and performing grueling physical labor to survive - people like then-64-year-old Linda May. When journalist Jessica Bruder began reporting her 2017 book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the foreclosures and vaporized investments of the Great Recession were pushing many seniors to hit the road.

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