I wanted to like this so badly, but I couldn't quite get there. I have to stop going into movies with high expectations. I was waiting to be blown away but _Nomadland_ is just not a good movie.

Were the characters interesting, the lack of plot could be justified. But I wasn't invested with Fern’s journey at all. She is abrasive with zero personality. Chloé Zhao has nothing interesting to say about the reality she portrays. That’s why most of the movie is just long shot of van driving with the same dramatic piano playing. It’s basically a cycle of Fern chatting, being outcast, and traveling while she displays the exact same expression. There's no character study. Not to come off as someone lacking empathy but I simply couldn’t care less about people in this movie. Thus I found the topic of _Nomadland_ to be incredibly purposeless. It's because of the way Americans talk about themselves. Like, _“even the poor in America are much better off then the average person in most other countries around the world.”_ So, does that mean Americans can't be poor? Then how the hell am I supposed to feel sorry for Fern?!

Since the film dances around questions of economic struggle, we are left with the familiar tired message of most indie movies - _~leave all your possessions behind to be fReEeE, connect with nature~_. For some reason, the poor are more _“close to Earth”_ than other people and their hardship is just part of their spiritual journey to self enlightenment. And of course, there's no threats living that lifestyle, everyone is so nice. One would think the poor fight the poor for survival, so I expected people around those parts to be dangerous but no, it seems like the nomads community is just super nice.

The movie is so superficial. For Chloé Zhao it’s totally enough to showcase what it's like to live in poverty by letting some poor people speak for a couple of minutes. She never explores why they are in these situations or the societal factors that put them there in the first place. The book _Nomadland_ is based on is very critical of Amazon's labor practices, so it is very weird to see people defending the depiction of Amazon in the film, which is not as 'apolitical' as the movie and Chloé Zhao are acting like it is. Fern always finds jobs but we never see her spending any money and yet somehow she has not enough to fix her van. How does that make sense? Maybe it was explained later in the movie (because I didn’t finish watching it)?

This movie is a whole lot of nothing. No story, character development, action or climax. The cinematography was nice every once in a while but not Oscar-worthy in the slightest. There's a reason the term Oscar Bait exists. These types of films are incredibly successful because they are an American liberal’s dream. And _Nomadland_ is just the typical _~artistic portrait of poverty as a beautiful struggle devoid of any real political messaging~_ Hollywood movie. I really can’t understand why people are parsing the film’s lack of anger toward capitalism. The movie is very neutral. I guess it was made for the same people who were acting as if they beat fascism buy electing a president who says how _“nothing would fundamentally change.”_ The meager crumbs Americans float as "progress".

One last thing, having Frances McDormand and David Strathairn _acting_ among people playing fictionalised versions of themselves is jarring. I don’t understand the ‘woke police’. Had McDormand’s characters be trans, Twitter would have been on fire. So, it’s okay to pretend you’re poor but not trans? The ‘woke’ people are shockingly selective of their outrage and it’s an issue I have with this era of ‘woke activism’.