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Although the trend is to bemoan that strong, idiosyncratic women have historically been negatively labeled, either morally or psychiatrically, current filmmakers continue this trend. In the modern era, this often involves a “reveal” of a childhood or family trauma. In two great recent films, Nomadland and Where’d Ya Go, Bernadette*, however, these traumas and diagnoses are foregone.
Nomadland, a likely nominee for this year’s Oscar and other awards, is by far the better-known film. It stars Frances McDormand as a recent widow named Fern whose town has disappeared after its chief industry vacates the area. Fern then embarks on a sojourn across the West in her camper van, working at Amazon and campsites periodically to replenish her funds, while camping alongside and mixing with her fellow nomads. The film was directed in a cinéma vérité style by Chloé Zhao, including key characters who were themselves camping across the West.
Fern is an appealing, popular person. But she is a loner: she travels and sleeps alone, and often sees no one she knows for long periods. On the other hand, she enjoys interacting with other campers, keeps up with them when possible, and shares her stories and secrets with them as they do with her. Even as a nomad, Fern is a caring and engaged person.
Indeed, people keep inviting her to visit and to live with them, and miss her when she’s gone. Those who long for and beckon to her include her sister and a male camper who himself returns to live with his son and his wife and baby.
That Fern rejects all such offers of intimacy with people who love her suggests some kind of antisocial diagnosis, and a formative traumatic experience that rules out intimacy. (Although Fern was married, and devoted to, a man who was something of a misfit himself.) But the film doesn’t go there. Fern needs no justification for herself or her life; nothing about her self-presentation suggests existential doubts. She worries that perhaps she should have dealt with her husband’s medical condition differently. But she doesn’t question who she is or how she lives. Fern relishes being her own mistress and dealing with the world on her own, even when van mishaps et al. present substantial obstacles for her to overcome.
We are naturally led to ask how much of Frances McDormand Fern represents. All of her and none of her is perhaps the answer. McDormand inhabits Fern fully, but Fern is a fictional character she is playing. Frances McDormand inhabits her own sphere—a status she works hard to preserve in her actual life.
Bernadette—the film (made in 2019 by director Richard Linklater) and the character—are more explicit about rejecting labels. The title character is played by another strong, idiosyncratic actress, Cate Blanchett, as a strong, idiosyncratic person. In this case, the character has abandoned a world-class career as an architect because something bad happened—not to her in her childhood, but to an award-winning building she created.
As a result, Bernadette has gone a bit off of the deep end. She takes medications and drinks, although she isn’t depicted as an addict or an alcoholic. She is also isolated. And she has lost any larger purpose. However, unlike Fern, Bernadette is anchored in a family, with a husband who is puzzled by but devoted to her, and a capable, strong daughter who loves her with all of her being—and vice versa.
That’s a nice backdrop. But, worried for her, her husband calls in a therapist to perform an intervention involving another mother from her daughter’s school who isn’t a friend and an FBI agent! (That’s all not kosher, I’m afraid.) Perhaps reflecting the artificiality of the setting, the therapist provides a ready-made diagnosis of an “adjustment problem,” one that causes anxiety and depression, and refers Bernadette to a residential treatment facility.
Instead, Bernadette runs away. This, as her husband points out, has been her pattern for the last 20 years. But unlike virtually any other contemporary film you will see, this “plan” works for Bernadette, leading her to re-engage in her creative life’s work. That is, in rejecting her diagnosis and therapy, but embarking on life, including her family and other people, Bernadette succeeds in overcoming her decades-long malaise.
Yes, this is a film that might be rejected by American trauma and psychiatric organizations. But it is as true to life as—or truer than—any trauma- and psychiatrically-based movie.
My only question is how Blanchett and Linklater had the guts, and ability, to make such a film in today's cinematic-psychiatric-trauma-addiction environment!
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*Both are available on Hulu.
