Review of Nomadland

A stunning road movie, distinctly american, with a soul of its own. I have never seen a Chloe Zhao before, but I can say that her style feels close to some of Malick's less radical works, which I mean as a praise. It's a film that makes you strongly empathize with its characters, it successfully manages to make you want to embark on such a nomadic life. It is able to transfer that sense of connection to nature that its characters feel. Imbibed with Thoreau, it manages to even slip in quite a few Shakespeare quotes. Many might argue that my assessment that the life depicted is close to the one imagined by Thoreau in his "Walden" is wrong, as the protagonist doesn't isolate herself from society. Yet, Thoreau's account of his experiment also shows that he interacted with local communities, next to living in the woods. Similarly, these nomads live in a liminal level between society. they do small, temporary jobs, but are free enough to connect with nature, to build their home, in a similar fashion to Thoreau. In this sense, Nomadland is an authentic, culturally american movie, opposed to the unauthentic, modern-day chaos that is often perceived in the word as representative of what is "american".