Nomadland Movie

Posted by on May 1st, 2023  •  0 Comments

This is my review of the movie.
Ideally when you get to retirement age everything is paid for and you have a nest egg in the bank to cover unexpected costs. You hopefully also have a spouse and both of you have Social Security and or pension checks coming in. If you are really lucky, you will have grown children in town who are gainfully employed and can offer assistance if needed. This is our situation and we fully realize how lucky we are.

But if the dice roll the other way, you may have none of those things. No home, no nest egg, a pittance of retirement funds, no spouse or family, and a broken down untrustworthy vehicle.

This movie is about that life. She is a proud independent woman, grieving for her spouse and the good life they used to have. She must work to survive…basically until she dies. She finds a community, a tribe, amongst the nomads living on BLM land in the desert. It’s not much, but it’s far better than living in gas station parking lots.

I travel a lot for rockclimbing, sleeping in the back of my pickup truck under a simple plumbers shell. I never stay in hotels, preferring a more frugal lifestyle. I sleep in those same gas stations lots and BLM camps. I’ve sung songs and shared fires under the stars with “the tribe”. They are instantly recognizable. It’s always campers, vans, trucks and built out SUVs with the occasional tent. Often the people are one car breakdown away from being truly homeless.

But whereas I’m living the retirement dream: traveling by choice, often with my wife, in our new truck to our national parks, the people shown in this movie are in their sixties and seventies living lonely lives of quiet desperation. The community they find amongst their peers in the desert is a beautiful thing.

This is not a cheerful movie, nor is it a love story where a happy young couple sail off into the sunset. It is however an important story about our forgotten seniors.

P.S. Bob, the man with the big white beard runs a youtube channel called CheapRVliving. He is real, not at all an actor. I’ve learned a lot from him about how to live in a vehicle.

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