Chloé Zhao’s Characters Find America in Each Other

American stories often invite us to envision the West as perceived by its first white settlers: wild, open, and theirs for the taking. Against a backdrop of mountains and plains, these settlers gazed upon a land of abundant, staggering beauty and saw only opportunities for glory. Men, for they are always men, convinced each other and themselves they could find honor in complete individual freedom, and should undertake any accompanying suffering in silence. Our nation gave this retreat from communal responsibility other names — solitude, ruggedness, stoicism — and from this, we built the Western mythology. A story, told across generations, of uninhabited frontiers and the cowboys who wander them, saving the day to great acclaim before riding off endlessly into a series of sunsets.

None of this was true, of course. Western lands were very much inhabited by Indigenous peoples, and historical cowboys were underpaid contractors living grueling lives. But America has never let truth stand in the way of belief. And somewhere in our centuries-long reverence for individualism, its myth has permeated our society enough to become, if not the truth, then at least perceived as such. We have been conditioned to aspire to personal accomplishment over community, and to ignore the loneliness that results. And it is difficult, when we see the world celebrating these selfish values, to make choices that prioritize caring for those around us.

Chloé Zhao makes movies about just these kinds of choices. Both The Rider (2017) and Nomadland (2020) are conceivably Westerns — their stories unfold amidst gorgeous landscapes and center on solitary protagonists. But while these films share the genre’s empathy with how hard it can be to achieve meaning in a dark world, they differ in what this achievement looks like. Zhao is committed to dramatizing the hard work of centering others in our lives, and while her characters make different choices, because their situations are different, both reject the pressure around them and choose to care about something outside themselves. Looking at them in tandem forms a blueprint for a new type of Western figure: one whose acclaim comes not from their personal success, but from finding prosperity in their relationships with others.

We meet the hero of The Rider as his titular identity has been stripped away from him. A rodeo accident, and its accompanying brain damage, have left Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) unable to compete as he once did. Brady’s relationship with this identity is complex: while it’s what he loves to do, and he wants to succeed at it for its own merits, it’s also the only path within reach that will see him labeled anything but a failure. An acquaintance in the grocery store tells him he should get back to rodeoing before he gets “stuck” doing something else. His close friends also encourage him to get back in the saddle — their loving intent doesn’t mitigate the pressure they put on Brady to open himself up to the risk of further, irreversible injury.

In one striking scene, Brady reminisces with these peers around a campfire about their buddy Lane (Lane Scott), who was once the best bull rider in the area. Lane is in rehab after suffering permanent brain damage, but the conversation circumvents this, staying fixed on his past achievements. Silence lingers between testimonials of their friend’s greatness and affirmations from the young men that they too will reach these heights; unspoken is the inescapable reality that while emulating Lane’s greatness is a possibility, meeting his same fate is the far likelier alternative.

The Rider rests on Brady’s choice of whether to pursue these dreams, or protect himself and his loved ones by accepting that he has entered that new phase of life where we must cease the exploration of new frontiers and tend to the pastures we have. While there are times he is reluctant to do this, Zhao’s script is smart in showing us that Brady has had the capability to be a caretaker since the beginning. We see it in his interactions with Lane, so giving and deliberate, and in his vigilant care of his sister. The Rider is not the story of a man learning compassion; it’s the story of his realization, when so many people consider it a sign of failure, that this compassion has value. By the end of the film, when he permanently turns his back on the rodeo to be there for those who need him, we feel the full weight of all he’s giving up,making his decision to choose to care for others all the more beautiful.

Fern (Frances McDormand), the protagonist of Nomadland, is also a caretaker. Seeing a young man on the side of the road, she offers him a sandwich and asks about his girlfriend. When she runs into her old student in the store, the repertoire they once shared is clear. But while we meet Brady as he enters adulthood and rejects the pressure of greatness to perform the modest task of caring for his loved ones, our introduction to Fern comes at a time later in life where she is seemingly developing a cowboy mentality of her own. Throughout the film, she balks at opportunities to put down roots, and McDormand imbues the character with an icy urgency to stay detached from others. When her kind-of-boyfriend Dave (David Strathairn) invites her to stay at his son’s house, she ups and leaves the next morning. She turns down a similar opportunity to stay with her sister.

“I think Fern’s part of an American tradition,” her sister says, comparing her to the pioneers. From the outside, this independence seems to be the essence of the nomad lifestyle. But watching Fern and the nomads interact, it’s clear that unlike the pioneers, who saw the West as a prize to be won, the nomads travel in harmony with the land and each other. They move with the seasons, embracing the opportunities that arise and offering what help they can to whoever needs it. Those on the outside, such as Fern’s sister, are unable to see that while the lifestyle necessitates isolation, its beauty lies, not in the stretches of solitude, but the moments of human connection between them.

These connections the nomads share, although fleeting, are deep and restorative. Almost everyone on the road has tragedy in their past: Swankie’s (Charlene Swankie) terminal cancer only gives her a few months to live; Merle (Merle Redwing), seeing her friend die with his sailboat still in the driveway, became gripped by the urgent determination not to meet the same fate. And although Fern can be cold, as we hear her open up we come to understand how her own tragedy affects her lifestyle. After her husband Bo died, she remained in their town of Empire for years until it was erased from the map. “If I left, it would be like he never existed,” she tells guru Bob Wells of their old home. Fern rejects permanence not only to outrun the past, but to live for the present in a way she never has before. “I maybe spent too much of my life remembering,” she realizes late in the film. So she wanders.

Although Fern has neither the desire nor the spiritual capacity to put down roots, her choice to remain on the road is not a selfish one. Unlike Brady, entering adult responsibility, Fern has already chosen, and had taken from her, the loved ones worth living for. Although she refuses to resettle in a permanent home, she continues to care for those around her, and more importantly for herself. Nomadland shows us a multitude of figures, many of them elders, who cope with pain that may never heal by stepping into a new, transient chapter of life; their lifestyle, although prompted by tragedy, offers the possibility of arriving at solace. To Fern and the nomads, the Western landscapes we’ve been taught to view as empty are filled with the kinship stemming from seeing other humans, in all their joy and grief and dignity, and accepting them for exactly who they are. When Fern returns to Empire at the end of the film, finally able to release her memories there, she allows herself not to retreat from the world, but to enter it, ready to enter into communion with all those she will meet down the road.

With neither character, and in neither film, does Zhao romanticize the struggle of her subjects. Their lives are hard; so too are the decisions they make. To do the work of better understanding and loving those around us is demanding, and it can be easier, when society encourages the lifestyle of the lone ranger, to continue living for ourselves. But the difficulty in making such choices is exactly what lends them meaning. Both Brady and Fern end their story riding into the sunset, but they are not riding away from anything. Instead, they ride towards more intentional relationships with one another, towards a future where we care more for this land and its inhabitants. There’s a lot of darkness in the world. But seeing Zhao’s characters choose to care for one another, you can just start to make out a brighter day on the horizon.