Film Review: ‘Nomadland’: Destitute Elders in Vans in America’s Badlands Fern (Frances McDormand) is a “houseless” nomad, in “Nomadland.” (Searchlight Pictures/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures) It’s got most critics out of their minds with happiness, but I had a hard time with it. It may be the most depressing thing I’ve seen in the last five years. What else should one feel about the subject matter? You’ve got elderly Americans forced out of secure lives by fate and into cruel states of Steinbeckian migrant survival, working the most menial jobs imaginable. You’ve got your truck-stop toilet cleaning, sugar beet harvesting, and monotonous assembly-line-type Amazon factory jobs (the employers knowingly prey on the elderly), with no relief in sight. They live in vans that can easily break down in desolate stretches of nowhere, using five-gallon plastic containers as toilets. There needs to be a follow-up movie that depicts those for whom nomad life is, primarily, a calling and a joy.