A woman in her sixties embarks on a journey through the western United States after losing everything in the Great Recession, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
It's pretty shameful to present a study of this particular milieu of nomads and not reason for one second about why things happen, like, at all. Their circumstances appear as an ahistorical constant and everyone's just growing closer together in face of hardship, like a big wholesome family, how cute. Ridiculous how the protagonists are infantilized, and how each of them gifts Frances McDormand a little piece of wisdom along her way. Maybe we can make a whole calendar out of these phrases. In between we get those intense staring-into-the-endless-steppe shots, did Terrence Malick get his crusty old hands on the camera? For what it's worth, it wasn't vile, just oblivious.
