tomorrow, tomorrow, another tomorrow

Alanis 2022-03-22 09:01:47

Not long after the movie started, Fern ended his labor in the Amazon factory and met a smart female student he had taught in the mall.

Fern asked her if she had forgotten what they had learned together, and the student recited a fragment of Macbeth's monologue, which is also the first Shakespeare in the movie—

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time; until the last second;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Go out, go out, short candlelight!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, It is a tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. Can't find any meaning.


The film has nothing to do with politics - although it's about recessions, social security failures, people objectified in capitalism - no matter how urgent or inexplicable the moment may seem, the political conversation is only a few decades, at most a few decades. One hundred years, and this film is about the repeated images of red-shirted forests, rocks, stars 21 light-years away, eroded coastlines, and distant valleys. They existed before our human society existed and will continue to exist after we exist.

In Zhao Ting's examination, the proposition I see is, how do we live in such an eternity.

How do we survive in this world after we have lost our family, nostalgia, and worldly desires. When the sky is so vast, it seems that life can only rush out of the eaves, walk on the road, and wander around.

Such wandering is not romantic. Fern's sister said to her, "You are braver and more honest... but you left a big hole by leaving."

Dave's farm is quiet, plain, three generations living together, simple and happy. The small animals on the farm chase each other, and there is a gentle and simple man beside him, and the baby's little hand is in the palm of his hand: she seems to be standing at the end of a certain road, and the answer is at hand. But the gap in her heart has been opened, and all the ready-made answers in the world cannot be filled.

She could only overturn the roof and run away again.

She met a young man on the way. The young man said his girlfriend could not read the letter he wrote. So she said, why not write poetry? She read him a Shakespeare sonnet--

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander' st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This was her wedding vow: You are as long as time in the immortal poem.


There's a saying in the movie, there's no final goodbye.

Goodbye is parting, farewell, is no longer seeing each other. In Chinese, there is only the word goodbye when it comes to leaving. It seems that we have known for a long time that parting will always meet again.

View more about Nomadland reviews

Extended Reading
  • Kaya 2021-12-03 08:01:42

    The dialectics of nomadism and settlement. The irony is that nomads are the least willing to accept change. They are attached to abandoned homes, migrating round and round along fixed routes, and living in the past. Instead, the settlers are calm about change. If you can adapt to others to accept changes and start a new life, you will be resettled under the eaves like David, who the hostess likes.

  • Jaqueline 2022-03-26 09:01:05

    In the scene where the heroine is in his best friend's room, he persuaded her to stay, but the cry of the baby in his arms interrupted him again and again, as if to remind her that she was only an outsider. She took the baby and examined it carefully. In too many silent places to communicate with the audience, trying to bring into the character's inner world through the excellent sense of rhythm and the breath of the camera, it is really good, I have to say that McDormand as a producer is awesome

Nomadland quotes

  • Merle: I worked for corporate America, you know, for 20 years. My friend Bill worked for the same company. And... He had liver failure. A week before he was due to retire, HR called him in hospice and said, you know, let's talk about your retirement. And he died 10 days later, having never been able to take that sailboat that he bought out of his driveway. And he missed out on everything. Then he told me before he died, just don't waste any time, girl. Don't waste any time. So I retired as soon as I could. I didn't want my sailboat to be in the driveway when I died. So... yeah. And it's not. My sailboat is out here in the desert.

  • Fern: What's remembered, lives.