Leave it to a Chinese native to cut to the very soul of the American heartland. Inspired by Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction work “Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century,” Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner Nomadland sees director Chloé Zhao (The Rider) sharpen her skill as an exposer of marginalized American truths. A ruminant tone-poem about frontierism and the warpath of capitalism on the old and aging, Nomadland uses the visual poetry of the American midwest as a backdrop for her story about Fern, a widowed gig-worker wandering the states in the run-down van she calls home.

In the wake of the Great Recession, a growing legion of aging laborers have turned to the gig economy, roaming the Great Plains in search of paying work and a respite from winter’s cold spells. Throughout the year, they cluster in tribes of RVs and tents to learn self-sufficiency and perfect their defense against the unrelenting and merciless wave of changing workforce requirements. Zhao superimposes the fictional Fern atop this very real but largely invisible phenomenon, bearing witness as she takes to a newfound life of roaming and the bouncing soul purpose she rediscovers along the way.

Played with coiled intensity and quiet destitute by Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Fern finds herself thrust from the hold of the life she and her husband once built together. Ramshackled by fickle demand, her sheetrock-producing adoptive hometown of Empire, Nevada has shuddered into a ghost town, stripped of its zip code and community. Without enough benefits to fund an early retirement, Fern goes Kerouac and takes to the road and Zhao tracks her journey with the documentarian eye that so defines her work.

Continuing her record for casting non-actors, Zhao blends fiction and nonfiction seamlessly, always with a hunger for naturalism and authenticity. As Fern distances herself from the oppressiveness of capitalism (particularly against the ostensibly ill-fit elderly), she comes into the ranks of veteran nomads, many of whom are played by actual nomads like Bob Wells, an off-the-grid mentor for the nomadic with his own YouTube channel, and Charlene Swankie, a dying compatriot who regales Fern with memories of a life spent river kayaking and a cherished memory of discovering a swallows nests and falling into a state of complete fulfilledness. Later, Swankie shares a video of exactly this and Zhao urges us to see the awe, serenity, and chaos of the moment reflect her film’s themes.

Like Zhao, Fern is a thoughtful observer of these tales, hovering from place to place and taking in the stories of those around her. Though there is a general distaste for the cruel and inhumane sweep of the invisible hand, the characters of Nomadland largely do not rage against their circumstance. Where vitriol might otherwise form, instead Zhao discovers a longing that takes on a life of its own, transforming a void of normalcy for lust for adventure, a retiree wanderlust that Fern soon finds cannot be so easily shaken.

It should come as no surprise that McDormand is stunning in the role, offering a full-tilt commitment to a performance that only she could give. Much as Fern rejects trenchant complacency, so too does McDormand, who gives herself over to Fern’s golden-year self-discovery, even when that involves shitting in a bucket. For Nomadland and the character both, it is about the journey and not the destination, which leaves those closest to Fern and those who want to grow closer to her in a state of both dazed admiration and crestfallen frustration. Bit by the travel bug she has been and even long after the credits roll, Fern is unlikely to seek the antidote.

In a way, Nomadland both affirms and rejects that most American of doctrines: Manifest Destiny. In a general sense, Zhao’s film remarks upon frontier spirit and the zeal for life that those seeking such gain. In their quest for some small semblance of belonging, these great endless expanses, brought to life with stunning golden hour cinematography by Joshua James Richards, offer a glimpse of the world stretching out a welcome mat and extending its fruit for those seeking a humble life of balance and simplicity. In a more important sense though, Zhao’s story is decidedly anti-Manifest Destiny in that it affirms the filmmaker’s humanist purpose: it begs audiences to find harmony amongst each other and within their environs. Nomadland and those discovered within it are not interested in staking claim or parceling off but rather pursuing a collective reclamation of self-worth. We are not dollar signs, Zhao’s poetic elegy insists, we are wanderers. Nomadland invites all to wander along.

CONCLUSION: A departure from the road most traveled, Chloé Zhao’s journey into the American Heartland offers a glimpse of the country’s dejected finding renewed purpose, freely roaming like the buffalo before them. Frances McDormand is as good as she’s ever been and is handsomely framed by awing naturalistic cinematography and humanist direction.