ABSTRACT
NOMADLAND won numerous awards internationally during 2021, probably due to its theme of learning to live as a van-dwelling “nomad” on America’s highways chiming with the widespread isolation experienced during the COVID pandemic. But it also relates to longstanding American traditions of seeking wilderness solace, reflected in such classic texts as Walden and Huckleberry Finn, in traditional Westerns, as well as in the 1960s Hippie rejection of modern consumerism. Yet, the film’s female protagonist’s escape from the yoke of domesticity, after her bereavement and the collapse of the remote company town where she lived, may also point to a search for her “true self” as theorized by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott.
