ABSTRACT
Chloé Zhao’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the Jessica Bruder book about van-dwelling communities living on the margins of contemporary American life is situated as representative of a number of prevailing tendencies in the indie film sector. These include a focus on its socio-political, formal, and industrial/institutional dimensions. Nomadland is positioned as relatively alternative in socio-political terms, in its focus on figures not usually represented in the commercial mainstream, while also typical of such work in avoiding any more overt engagement in the political-economic issues highlighted in the original source and drawing on conventional forms of “frontier” discourse. The film is also situated within wider indie formal tendencies, in its use of what are marked as “subtle” realist and expressive approaches, the latter contributing to the evocation of frontier tropes, and in its use of a low-key but individual-centered narrative framework. At the level of conception and production, Nomadland is shown to be a product of both indie-distinctive and more conventionally institutionalized practices, the former in the use of the community-based ethic developed by Zhao in her previous films, the latter in the involvement of agents and the leading and shaping of the work by an established star-producer.
