Watching Nomadland feels like a kind of freedom. Shot in five statesâSouth Dakota, Nebraska, Arizona, Nevada, and Californiaâthe film follows Fern, a modern-day ânomad,â played with graceful grit by Frances McDormand. After the death of her husband and the economic collapse of her town, she pinballs around the American west in search of work, living out of a camper van named Vanguard, and meeting other itinerant souls along the way. Some of them, including Linda May and Swankie, are real-life nomads who play themselves; both were written about in , journalist Jessica Bruderâs book on which the movie is based, which tracks a group of transient, older Americans as they follow a trail of mostly seasonal jobs in the wake of the Great Recession. But if those real people are what give the movie its heart, itâs the landscapes, with their lonely, limitless beautyâfrom the striated rock formations of South Dakotaâs Badlands National Park to the redwoods of northern California's Mendocino coastâthat give it its contours.