Based on the nonfiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” by Jessica Bruder, director and writer Chloe Zhao takes audiences on a quiet, almost poetic character-led journey with star Frances McDormand as our guide through this nomadic lifestyle.

The fictionalized story we go on is anchored around Fern, a 60-something-year-old woman who hits the road in an old camper van after her husband has died, she loses her job when the United States Gypsum Company shutters and the company town where she lives along with it.

Set in 2011, Fern can’t survive on retirement money so she begins wandering from town to town doing odd jobs including working at an Amazon warehouse over the holidays where others living the nomadic life also work.

From there she makes her way to Quartzite where she meets Bob Wells, a kind of teacher to others seeking out this kind of way of life. Through him and women named Linda May and Swankie (all three played by actual nomads of the same name) and Dave (David Strathairn), Fern learns and seems giddy with the possibility her new lifestyle brings.

She moves on to working as a camp host in South Dakota’s Badlands National Park where she meets up with Dave again who is working as a park ranger. The two develop more of a friendship especially after he has emergency surgery and tells her that he can get her another job at Wall Drug serving burgers.

They part ways when Dave learns that his adult son James (Tay Strathairn) is about to have a child but not before Dave asks her to come with him. She declines.

The rest of the film is more of Fern exploring the west, taking up gig-type jobs in various industries, struggling with being on her own but never becoming bitter to the fact. She relishes in her freedom.

“Nomadland” plays without much of a thorough plot, instead it simply follows Fern through the motions. There is no major climactic moment, rather a simpler realization our protagonist has. It’s quiet, unassuming and understated.

McDormand delivers, as she always does, a magnificent performance as this woman who has childlike awe for the vastness of the world she finds herself in. She is kind while she works through her grief of losing everything she has had while it may not have been everything she wanted.

This is what she wanted. The open spaces and roads she finds herself traveling down lead her to encounters with people like her, entranced by the freedom nomadic life brings, unable to go it without the work that comes from the gig economy.

It teeters almost on the edge of documentary-style as is typical with Zhao’s other work, casting non-actors to perform, giving the film another layer of authenticity. McDormand herself lived some of this nomadic life, interacting with people who sometimes didn’t realize they were talking to a two-time Oscar winner, working the odd jobs her character had to and all the while reacting genuinely to the stories being told around her. Her captivating expressions feel more authentic than any performance of recent memory because her performance really isn’t much of a performance at all.

It is a stunning character study of the people who have largely been forgotten by the rest of society but within their community, they endure and form lasting, if short, friendships.

While the film touches on the almost anti-capitalistic tones that come from being a nomad, shirking many of the traditional pieces of that life, but it never goes too far down that rabbit hole.

There is a wider story to be told about the effects the great recession had on gig workers, especially those close to retirement, but “Nomadland” isn’t that. And it doesn’t necessarily try to be.

Instead, this neo-western takes us on a voyage to the unknown and through Fern, we see the wide-eyed wonder and fulfillment that comes with freedom from normalcy.

“Nomadland”

107 minutes

Rated R for some full nudity.

3.5 stars