“I maybe spent too much of my life just remembering.”

At a key moment in Nomadland, Fern (played by Frances McDormand) joins a group of fellow nomads around a campfire. Together, they tell their stories. The dialogue feels as if each person is responding to a question from an off-camera interviewer as we see them each in close-up. Some smile, some tear up. Director Chloé Zhao rarely cuts away from their faces.

The cast members here and in many scenes throughout Nomadland are “real people,” not actors. They are shown — in all of their simultaneous normalcy and eccentricity — without glamour. Makeup doesn’t hide their wrinkles; their clothes are often ill-fitting or handmade. We see them talk about — and use — makeshift chamber pots. They cook and eat canned soup inside of their cramped RVs. They are seen working temporary jobs — at real Amazon factories, in the kitchens of small-town restaurants, and in the bathrooms and campgrounds of Badlands National Park, where the task of cleaning up after guests is shown in all of its unvarnished glory.

The filmmaking isn’t flashy. A few shots call attention to themselves — notably, a lengthy tracking shot that follows Fern through a RV park at sunset past new acquaintances and vans both big and small, with people biking and stretching and riding ATVs in the distance.

But most shots do not. The lighting isn’t perfect. The camera most often lingers on close-ups of faces. The characters inhabit a few stunning landscapes, but most of the locations feel raw, empty, and fairly anonymous.

Mixed media comes into play late in the movie; Zhao cuts away to still images as Fern reflects on her past, and a cell phone video is used to draw closure to a transitory character’s storyline.

In all of these ways, the film feels much like a documentary; the dialogue — which often feels crafted to clearly convey thematic points — and the presence of McDormand and David Strathairn are the only overt reminders that this is actually a scripted, narrative film.

The spirit of Bo, Fern’s husband who passed away, looms over the story. Fern lost everything after the sheetrock factory that they both worked at in Empire, NV closed down. The life that they had built together over the course of their marriage vanished in the span of a few months, and she was left alone to mourn in a town dissolved to the point of losing its zip code. The home that they owned together was rendered worthless overnight.

And so, she hit the road.

We watch her journey from town to town; lengthy driving shots trail her van down winding highways in stunning locales. We see her stop and feel the wind on a cliff overlooking a tumultuous seashore, admire the size of majestic redwood trees, and climb the rock formations of the South Dakota Badlands. We also see her eating alone in empty restaurants, and sleeping in the bed of her van.

She wanders, searching for answers, processing a deep, unshakeable grief.

All the while, she holds on to her dignity. She tells a teenage girl that she isn’t homeless, but houseless, and that there is a huge difference. We learn that she was once a tutor; she quotes Shakespeare from memory to a lost young soul while they share a beer in a parking lot. She defends her choice to live a transitory existence against those who question her judgment. She refuses offers to house her; she wants to make it on her own. She doesn’t accept handouts: “I want to work. I like work,” she says.

Along the way, she meets like-minded souls, and by interacting with them, she discovers many ways to process grief. We first see her breaking down in tears while clutching an article of her husband’s clothing in a storage unit in the dead of winter; later, she carefully glues shattered plates back together — plates that were gifted to her by her father. Mementos of the past connect her to the people whom she has lost.

She finds joy, however fleeting, in adventures big and small.

And, in one of the film’s final scenes, she seeks formal closure by returning to her old home and factory to dwell with her memories.

She may never get full closure, but she is at least comforted by the journey, and by the company of others whose lives have turned out much like hers. These people are open about their pasts and share uncertainties about their futures. They help each other. Some are reminded of the support and comfort of family; others want to be left alone.

Fern convinces a kind man to return home to watch his newborn grandson grow up, and reminds him to forgive himself for not being a good dad to the newborn’s father: “Don’t think about it too much, Dave. Just go. Be a grandfather.”

She herself wants to be left alone, however. She feels as if she cannot build a new life for herself; it would feel like a betrayal of the life that she had committed to before.

And so, she drifts.

Along the way, the nomads pay tribute to those among them who pass away, and insist on never saying a formal goodbye to those who they’re with. As grief is an ongoing journey, so are their travels — and so are their lives. Late in the film, a man tells Fern, “I’ve met hundreds of people out here and I don’t ever say a final goodbye. I always just say, ‘I’ll see you down the road.'”

The faces and stories of these drifters are the most impactful part of this compassionate, gentle film.