There's a scene in Nomadland where Frances McDormand's character, Fern, s**ts in a bucket.
In another scene, she floats naked in a creek, gazing up at the sky, her arms flung wide, as she takes in the sheer enormity of the world.
These two scenes sum up what Chloe Zhao's Oscar front-running film is about - the brutality and beauty of life.
How life can literally or figuratively throw a bucket of s**t at you but you can still find joy and brilliance in the people and world around you.
How you can adapt and learn how to survive.
The film, which was written and directed by Zhao, has been nominated for a bunch of Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Editing.
Watch the trailer for Nomadland. Post continues below.
It's based on Jessica Bruder's 2017 non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. While writing the book, Bruder travelled around America spending time with the country's new breed of 'nomads' - people who had been left homeless or unemployed after the Great Recession, so they hit the road and began living off the grid.
When Zhao took on the project of turning the book into a film, she hired many of the real life people featured in the book to play themselves in the movie. There's grandmother Linda May, who dreams of settling down one day and building an "Earthship", 65-year-old Bob Wells who is the founder of Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, the largest gathering of nomads and van dwellers in the United States. They star alongside 78-year-old Charlene Swankie, who plays Swankie in the movie. Swankie has been living on the road for over a decade.
It's hard to tell how much of their storylines and dialogue is real and how much is scripted as Zhao craftily blends fact with fiction.
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