Review of 'Nomadland'

This is a really good, beautiful film about mostly old people in the US living in campervans. They're mainly very poor, and some of them do casual jobs when they can - the central character (an older woman whose husband has died, has lost her house, and actually lost her town when the mine that provided it with a living closed down) works at an Amazon warehouse, a fast food restaurant, a campsite - all on a casual basis without the baggage of employment or career.

Nothing too bad happens to her during the film...the people depicted are underclass people, but there are none of the usual underclass tropes - they aren't depicted as trash, substance abusers, drunks, or anything like that. Instead there is profound sympathy and a depiction of their solidarity and support, even to people that they don't know and might never see again. They share food, and drink and cigarettes (and those latter are not presented as moral or health disasters). The images depict a life that is sometimes hard but also sometimes idyllic. It reminded me a bit of Cory Doctorow's book 'Walkaway', and there's a portrait of van-life guru Bob Wells that suggests he has a profound understanding of how van life fits into the current moment in American capitalism. Interesting too that it's this week that the UK government has announced its plans to criminalize this lifestyle.

And a technology point. This film is not available in the UK until 30th April, when it will be streamed on the Disney platform, and nowhere else. Not a Disney subcriber, not likely to become one. Fortunately it was available on 'informal distribution' already, and in very good quality. I'm also pleased that it's possible again to stream it from the laptop in another room to the TV via Chromecast using VLC. This stopped working for a while, and then I used something called Videostream, but then that stopped working too. For a while nothing worked. Now VLC have sorted it out, and I'm very pleased.