The phrase “homeless person” is used so often, and so carelessly, that it’s almost as familiar as bland descriptors like “brown hair” or “blue eyes.” An individual who, for whatever reason, ceases to live in a house or an apartment somehow becomes transformed into an unidentifiable Other, a person for whom we have no convenient compartment. “Who was she before she was homeless?” we might ask ourselves when we see someone living on the street. The not-so-subtle subtext is that if you don’t live in a standard dwelling, your so-called homelessness is the most interesting thing about you.
In writer-director Chloé Zhao’s perceptive and cogent Nomadland—one of the most prominent selections of the fall film festivals, including Venice, Toronto, and New York, and which will open in theaters December 4—almost no one lives in a…
